Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink • Hacker News Board

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#71

Post by deskglass » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:10 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #63

sixothree wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even count the times I've actually heard this argument from my right wing family members.

As in they actually advocate it? One of my misfeatures is that I tend to ask annoying questions of powerful people, and really pissed off the Mayor of Sunnyvale one year when they were advocating re-developing school property into commercial real estate. I think I said, "Are you saying it would be better for my children if there kids, my grandchildren, had no where to go to school but could hang out at a Target?"

That redevelopment would have been extremely reasonable if they were the mayor of Sunnydale.

Also, unless that were the only school in the area, your question may have been unproductive. The marginal value to society of a commercial installation can be greater than that of a school.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#72

Post by jotm » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:12 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #17

For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs…

My thought exactly!

Is this accurate, deep water reserves are allowed to be polluted? That doesn't make sense at all, and it's completely insane if it's true...

Even Russia has laws protecting deep aquifers, in fact they're considered cleaner than the surface reserves (that may actually be true seeing as Baikal has a goddamn paper mill on its shore).

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#73

Post by jotm » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:14 PM UTC

mrottenkolber wrote: post #66

ars wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear isn't perfect. It's simply better. Go see just how much toxic and radioactive waste coal mining produces. WAY WAY more than nuclear power.

Excuse me? Does one of those plants have to blow up in your neighbourhood until you can relate to the fact that some risks are not worth taking? These things are dirty bombs, period. Edit: To clarify, I am not arguing for coal. Just against nuclear power. I live next to a garbage->energy and gas turbine plant. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear plant.

Coal plants (and their supply chain) are just as dirty without having to blow up...

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#74

Post by gaius » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:16 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #60

Arjuna wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of this quote, attributed to the Cree Native Americans: "Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."

Kurzweil would probably respond that nanobots and the singularity will fix everything.

Kurzweil believes that being very very small allows you to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics. There's no physics to back this up...

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#75

Post by thehme » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:18 PM UTC

Ignorance is definitely bliss because unless we know the facts about how we dispose of waste and what the limits of our natural resources are, we tend believe they are infinite. However, the sad part is also that even when people do KNOW, some don't seem interested in what will happen 100+ yrs from now and instead live the moment. I was shocked to read that we "allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs", it's troubling.

What we do to this Earth needs to be evaluated on a regular basis by our Gov. officials and in this case, hopefully we can all agree that "deep, unknown potential sources of drinking water [DO] matter" and matter right now.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#76

Post by gaius » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:18 PM UTC

jotm wrote: post #73

mrottenkolber wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me? Does one of those plants have to blow up in your neighbourhood until you can relate to the fact that some risks are not worth taking? These things are dirty bombs, period. Edit: To clarify, I am not arguing for coal. Just against nuclear power. I live next to a garbage->energy and gas turbine plant. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear plant.

Coal plants (and their supply chain) are just as dirty without having to blow up...

... And actually emit more radiation, traces of uranium in coal just go straight up the chimney...

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#77

Post by mrottenkolber » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:21 PM UTC

mrottenkolber wrote: post #66

ars wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear isn't perfect. It's simply better. Go see just how much toxic and radioactive waste coal mining produces. WAY WAY more than nuclear power.

Excuse me? Does one of those plants have to blow up in your neighbourhood until you can relate to the fact that some risks are not worth taking? These things are dirty bombs, period. Edit: To clarify, I am not arguing for coal. Just against nuclear power. I live next to a garbage->energy and gas turbine plant. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear plant.

Guess fukushima was too long ago. Oh wait, its still leaking a tons of gene-pool destroying toxin every day.

I knew people first hand who died from chernobyl's toxic rain. Took 10 years for their faces to completely fall apart.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#78

Post by drivers99 » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:22 PM UTC

jotm wrote: post #72

peterwwillis wrote: post #17

For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs…

My thought exactly! Is this accurate, deep water reserves are allowed to be polluted? That doesn't make sense at all, and it's completely insane if it's true... Even Russia has laws protecting deep aquifers, in fact they're considered cleaner than the surface reserves (that may actually be true seeing as Baikal has a goddamn paper mill on its shore).

Reminds me of this radioactive contaminated lake in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#79

Post by lifeformed » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:23 PM UTC

mrottenkolber wrote: post #66

ars wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear isn't perfect. It's simply better. Go see just how much toxic and radioactive waste coal mining produces. WAY WAY more than nuclear power.

Excuse me? Does one of those plants have to blow up in your neighbourhood until you can relate to the fact that some risks are not worth taking? These things are dirty bombs, period. Edit: To clarify, I am not arguing for coal. Just against nuclear power. I live next to a garbage->energy and gas turbine plant. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear plant.

Calculate the chances of that happening and compare it's damage to the thousands of people who die every year from coal usage. Coal is 4000 times deadlier.

Re: Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

#80

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 8:27 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #69

dredmorbius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two challenges off the top: ⚫ Geothermal is available in limited areas. Few of those are proximate to salt water (though in Japan, Hawaii, and the Philippines this might be the case). I'm not aware that freshwater supplies are critically limited in any of those areas, however. ⚫ Geothermal itself tends to have substantial water requirements as a heat transfer / working fluid. Replenishing groundwater liberated throug…

I love that you went to the trouble of using a Unicode black circle character (⚫) rather than a bullet (•). That's some dedication to your circles.

I went hunting for a useful bullet character some time back, and that's what I found. It's downloaded and I use xclip to copy it to my Xorg clipboard from command history ("^Runic" generally brings it up:

    $ xc


But it'd sure be nice if HN had a real fucking Markdown library.


    
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