Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When state officials hit the company with a multimillion-dollar fine for the damage done, it declared bankruptcy and shut down. This makes me furious. The employees and directors all go about their lives elsewhere with nary a scratch despite causing such a disaster. This is the problem with capitalism. Privatize profits, socialize losses. The only solution is to force companies to put up bonds or insurance sufficie…
I feel compelled, from the tone of the comment, to point this out: Limited liability isn't some surprise side effect of a corporation's legal structure, it is often right there in the name (Ltd, LLC, Pty Ltd, etc). Yes that structure lets people get away with harmful shenanigans. The system is biased towards optimism. Feature, not bug. The benefits and strengths of this have so far completely outweighed the costs to…
Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
61–70 of 150 posts
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#62So, how radioactiove exactly it is ? I suppose it's the very bad kind of radioactive too, since water can easily be ingested ?
I'm guessing "not very radioactive" https://weather.com/news/news/2021-04-03-leak-at-florida-pho... > Hopes said Saturday afternoon that snook live in the pond that is in danger of collapsing and he has seen ducks swimming on top of it.
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coal operations have slurry ponds where they store the sludge from washing the coal. And coal power plants have fly ash ponds which are bad for the environment. We’re shutting down the coal plants but these ponds will be around forever. Here is a map of ash ponds from power plants https://earthjustice.org/features/map-coal-ash-contaminated-... Here’s a link to the slurry spill I lived through with no water for days h…
I am curious what you could do with all this. I was under the impression that ash could be composted pretty well. It is organic material after all. Or is the issue the other added chemicals?
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coal operations have slurry ponds where they store the sludge from washing the coal. And coal power plants have fly ash ponds which are bad for the environment. We’re shutting down the coal plants but these ponds will be around forever. Here is a map of ash ponds from power plants https://earthjustice.org/features/map-coal-ash-contaminated-... Here’s a link to the slurry spill I lived through with no water for days h…
I am curious what you could do with all this. I was under the impression that ash could be composted pretty well. It is organic material after all. Or is the issue the other added chemicals?
But I guess you could turn it into bricks and isolate those instead or even use them as building materials in some form of infrastructure.
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#65Results of a leak that happened in 1997: "amid heavy rains, a dam broke atop one of two gypsum stacks at the Mulberry Phosphates plant on State Road 60, unleashing a 56-million gallon spill of the acidic wastewater into the Alafia River. The pollution killed everything in its path for 42 miles, eventually rolling into Hillsborough Bay. The death toll included more than 1 million baitfish and shellfish and 72,900 game…
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#66Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#67After all, our civilization depends on continuity of klepto-capitalism...
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we used to feed ourselves for millions of years Use of fire at all emerged about 1.5 million years ago. Homo Sapiens emerged about 300 thousand years ago. First signd of any sort of agriculture are from about 15 thousand years ago. Stone age ended and we got first bronze tools less than 10 thousand years ago. The only method we have had "for millions of years" is hunter-gathering with stone tools.
Not only this but ancient agriculture supported fewer humans with a lot more work. This romanticized idea of growing food the old fashioned way and forget today’s busy way of life omits the part of doing nothing but growing food from not figuratively dawn to dusk. I spent some time in my youth farming the old fashioned way: hand tools only, carrying water from somewhere else, removing pests and weeds by hand. It is a…
1) desire to eat « fresh » foods out-of-season (greenhouses, air transport, lengthy controlled-atmosphere storage)
2) feeding food to food and getting 1/10th back (feeding corn to a cow)
3) desire for labour-intensive foods. Potatoes can be straightforward harvested from a field by a machine. Alfalfa (or anything in a greenhouse) cannot.
I think the biggest barrier to going back to « the old way » is not having manufactured fertilizer. Nobody cares if the water came by pump instead of by hand. But I supposed over-watered at the end = more water in the product instead of useful matter.
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#69Industrial Agricultural is a biohazard. We need to embrace the methods we used to feed ourselves for millions of years, with nature instead of in opposition of nature. Reference: https://archive.org/details/permaculture1adesignersmanualbyb...
But many people are in denial about how much work is needed to grow the food that feeds everyone. Crop yields need to be high and costs low at the grocery store end but farmers often only get around 200 dollars per ton for their hard effort.
Here's an old article from my region: https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/it-costs-a-pile-to-gro...
* Land $3 to $5 million
* Equipment $1 million
* Storage $1 million (shared/co-op or separate organization)
* Farmer profit ~$20,000 (16 hour days all spring/summer/fall) - other costs and taxes