There's the old Indigenous American saying which seems apropos:
"When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money."
Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
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Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#82Sounds like a case of "it's too expensive to deal with this wastewater, so let's just put it in a big pond and hope the dam bursts and we can claim it was all a big accident" Mining industries are especially famous for this - there are ponds of waste that are 70 years old, just waiting for their moment to escape...
There's not much that can be done with it because essentially (not basically) it is acid. Phosphate mining uses sulfuric acid to extract the phosphates. These are large scale operations and produce a lot of water with a pH of 1.5-2. There's no comparable industrial process that can consume it as input. So it sits. The gypsum stacks are the other waste byproduct. But it's less problematic because it doesn't flow, it j…
Is this the kind of mines that produce phosphate for fertilizer?
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What does it matter to you if they pay or we all do Because when you know you'll be held personally responsible, you'll act accordingly. If you feel like you can act any way you want without repercussion, then you'll automatically take more risks. Usually this is the way we justify the salaries of CEOs as well, "they are the ultimate responsible for everything in the company, so high salary is needed for that big r…
> The only impact is potential moral hazard, but that could be prevented with loss of licenses, etc.
Repeating what you've already written (or outright copying it verbatim / quoting yourself) is hardly a effective strategy of making yourself better understood via the internet. You'll do better by expanding or simplifying your point of view instead.
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#84Results 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…
Recently, during a rainstorm, a pesticide leaked from containers in a parking lot into the creek, killing all the amphibians in the creek for miles. And life goes on, just a little less nice than it used to be. i.e. its not just the big disasters that matter, but the countless little ones too.
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#85Earlier 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…
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X is enabled by Y does not preclude X being enabled by Z. That's only when its an if and only if, but that isn't the case here. Capitalism and Soviet Communism are neither the only alternative social structures, nor some kind of logical negations of each other.
tl;dr would be: logical fallacy!
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#86> "For every ton of phosphoric acid produced, the fertilizer industry creates 5 tons of radioactive phosphogypsum waste..." Is that correct? That sounds unsustainable, as well as unprofitable. Also, is it safe to presume that if the cost of proper disposal was reflected in the price of food, food would be significantly more expensive? Finally, are there particular foods this is used for?
In the past, people used their own manure and that of animals to fertilize fields. Manure contains lots of phosphorus as animals actually absorb only a small percentage from nutrition.
Urbanization broke this cycle. Sewer systems got established and the phosphorus doesn't end up on the fields anymore. It eventually reaches the rivers and seas and passes into the sediment. What a waste (pun intended). Instead, people started to mine graveyards (for bones) and guano on remote pacific islands...
Edit: Urine might work even better because reprocessing it is way simpler than dealing with manure. The nitrate and sodium levels have to be adjusted. Also, excreted pharmaceuticals have to be neutralized. Meanwhile, with manure one has to deal with pathogens, eggs of parasitic worms and a host of other ingredients, which might be difficult to predict in urban settings.
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#87Earlier 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…
>The benefits and strengths of this have so far completely outweighed the costs to the point where the argument against limited liability no longer has a leg to stand on.
What data points did you include in your calculation which led you to that conclusion?
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#88Quotes for the ages: "The water meets water quality standards for marine waters with the exception of pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen," "Marine water" itself will kill with three or four easy gulps, but I guess this wastewater is going into the ocean? It still sounds a bit too much like "yellow, except for the color, which is blue". Plus I'd expect any industrial wastewater to have lot…
I like the color quote. What's it a reference to? I got no hits on google.
Probably not what they were referencing, but it made me think of "The Expert" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#89There's the old Indigenous American saying which seems apropos: "When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money."
Yet, natives in Canada are slaughtering wildlife like no others...
Re: Florida state of emergency with millions of gallons of “radioactive wastewater”
#90There's the old Indigenous American saying which seems apropos: "When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money."
Old as in circa 1970's. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/20/last-tree-cut/
Still a great saying though.