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Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

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Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#221

Post by fenwick67 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #214
sigi45 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm able to complain about plastic and cigarette butts in parallel.

Congratulations, you should be very proud of yourself. That's quite an accomplishment. It's also a bizarrely defensive interjection, given that it has nothing to do with my comment, which was about the set of ostensible environmentalists that focus on self-flagellatory concerns at the expense of actually significant ones, a group that you're saying you're not part of.

Perhaps tone down your externally-flagellatoriousness if you're in agreement with somebody

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#222

Post by culot »

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #64
woodruffw wrote: post #5

Only tangentially related, but I am continually astonished by the absence of any sort of social norms surrounding cigarette butt disposal. I have (otherwise environmentally conscious!) friends who smoke, and I've personally witnessed them flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets. As a serious question, without judgment: are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?

Unless people object to it, the behavior will continue. I'm that guy who'll tell someone who drops a cigarette butt to pick it up; to which the response is usually indignation or they ignore me, I figure at least I annoyed them.

Unless there is a crackdown with real consequences people won't stop littering. It's too convenient, most will have to be forced to abate.

I would welcome a law enforcement branch that patrols the streets to prevent and punish these sorts of offenses. You can enact law after law, but if there's no enforcement then change is going to be elusive.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#223

Post by culot »

koolba wrote: post #58
woodruffw wrote: post #5

Only tangentially related, but I am continually astonished by the absence of any sort of social norms surrounding cigarette butt disposal. I have (otherwise environmentally conscious!) friends who smoke, and I've personally witnessed them flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets. As a serious question, without judgment: are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?

When something is taxed as much as cigarettes, it leads to a sense of entitlement for the user and an assumption that the cleanup cost is baked into the taxes.

That could lead to real change: drastic increase in tobacco taxes that only abate if cigarette waste drastically diminishes.

"Here's an extra $3 per pack tax that will stay in effect until cigarette waste is no longer an issue."

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#224

Post by Nomentatus »

darkmighty wrote: post #219
Nomentatus wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An essential part of civility is pointing out acts of incivility. In contrast, many moderns seem to believe that merely acknowledging the possibility of incivility, is itself the height of incivility. But that's nihilism, not civility.

If you don't curb incivil behavior somehow, you are effectively encouraging it -- that's because often they have something to gain from it. Despite morals and goodness of people, if something incivil unequivocally leads to gain, it will become the norm. A social backlash is a collective way to fight it and align the ethical with the "rational" (in the many situations where the law isn't applicable).

Now that I think about it, there's been some interesting research that explores where the threshold for such flip-flops in mores are; but I have no handy link to that. Anthropology has shown that some societies which value viciousness and cheating exist and are stable. I gots no handy link for that, either, however.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#225

Post by llampx »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #108
hossbeast wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"diesel truck owners rolling coal on cyclists and people in hybrid cars". What does this mean?

"Rolling coal" is deliberately tuning a diesel engine (by increasing the amount of fuel in relation to air) to make it emit large amount of sooty smoke on acceleration. Any particulate filters and other emissions equipments is usually also removed. It's a well-known term among car enthusiasts, I didn't consider that it probably isn't as well-known among people who are not car enthusiasts :-) The intention is to "stic…

I would like people like these to spend some time in a heavily polluted city like New Delhi, Mexico City or Shanghai/Beijing, to figure out if this is really the world they want to live in. smh...

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#227

Post by dokem »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #118
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #36

Won’t be surprised if plastic quickly surpasses cigarette butts. Literally everything is plastic, meanwhile the shift is away towards electronics like JUUL.

I naively thought vapes would at least leave cleaner streets than cigarettes. Lately I’ve been seeing plastic juul cartridges littering the sidewalks in nyc. There’s no winning.

There's no fixing shitty people.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#228

Post by sigi45 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #214
sigi45 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm able to complain about plastic and cigarette butts in parallel.

Congratulations, you should be very proud of yourself. That's quite an accomplishment. It's also a bizarrely defensive interjection, given that it has nothing to do with my comment, which was about the set of ostensible environmentalists that focus on self-flagellatory concerns at the expense of actually significant ones, a group that you're saying you're not part of.

I did respond to the following:

"issues misallocate their complaints, wrt the actual severity of polluters"

No need to be sarcastic.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#229

Post by thaumasiotes »

eesmith wrote: post #220
thaumasiotes wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- They may not prove that there are benefits to smoking tobacco, but they certainly do support the idea. - The claim is that smoking cigarettes has benefits, not that smoking nicotine does. - The idea of calling the lungs a single central hub is, as you acknowledge, that in order to move through the circulatory system it is necessary to pass through the lungs. There is no alternative route which offers the chance to…

Those papers neither support nor reject the idea. At best it is "suggestive." As I pointed out, with the prisoner/tobacco farmer case you must know the rate of smoking in both populations in order to make any sort of preliminary statement, because 4x vs. 1/4x gives you totally different interpretation, yes? But that information wasn't given. Therefore you cannot draw a conclusion either way from that study. There may…

I'm contrasting smoking cigarettes with vaping. I think those are significantly different things, and that it's very possible that the pure nicotine exposure you'd get from vaping does not contribute as much antiparasitic effect as you'd get from smoking a tobacco cigarette.

If you don't believe that the separate showings that

- smoking marijuana lowers parasite load

- workers on a tobacco plantation have lower parasite loads than prisoners

- tobacco has strong antiparasitic effects

do not constitute support for the idea that smoking tobacco lowers parasite load, then all I can say is that you're being intentionally obtuse. They are strong evidence that (1) Tobacco has antiparasitic effects (this is just the third result), and (2) smoking is an effective delivery method for antiparasitic treatments. That's what support looks like.

They don't conclusively establish that smoking is an effective delivery method for the antiparasitic effect of tobacco in specific. But that's a much stronger showing than "support" requires.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#230

Post by jessaustin »

darkpuma wrote: post #172
jessaustin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were biodegradable they wouldn't completely cover the shoulders of every road and highway.

Even if they were biodegradable, why would that make it okay to throw them on the ground? Half an uneaten sandwich is certainly biodegradable. Ants or birds would probably dispose of it in days. But what sort of degenerate just tosses half a sandwich onto the sidewalk? That's inconceivable behavior for most people.

...what sort of degenerate?

We're talking about cigarette smokers.

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