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Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

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Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#51

Post by ache7 »

pvg wrote: post #29
kingofpandora wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably why the commenter said there was another oil spill in Russia.

Probably but 'both are in Russia' is fairly poor relatedness. Norilsk is a mining center and one of the most polluted places on the planet. It's literally made of spills - rare earth metals are extracted straight out of the decades-long polluted soil. Kamchatka is more like a less-developed, even more BFE, Russian Alaska.

If it's an outdated pesticides, as suggested in another comment, then it's very related. Because it's a leakage from an old Soviet storage tanks.

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#52

Post by germinalphrase »

ozborn wrote: post #49
eloff wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm in favor of the pipeline, the alternative is shipping oil via rail which is riskier and burns more oil. Sadly it doesn't stay in the ground without a pipeline. However, Canada should get smart here and do what Norway does with their oil profits. Invest it in a sovereign wealth fund that's diversified away from oil. Because the oil age is ending and it will hit the most expensive producers, like the oil sa…

Agree with your comments regarding Norway and renewable energy. However, I suspect that if the pipeline is built they will still ship via rail if it is profitable - thus the net effect will just be more oil coming from the oil sands. The only scenario were a pipeline could help the environment (relative to the status quo - it's still bad) would be it rail usage was displaced by pipeline usage. This could be true only…

“ This could be true only when the price of oil holds stable between a narrow range such that pipeline shipments profitable, but not rail shipments.”

Are you saying this because you know it to be true, or are you speculating?

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#53

Post by refurb »

cnst wrote: post #32
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s legal to dump industrial diesel into rivers in the USA?

Look into the Superfund sites in the US of A. Most of the things done in the 80s are now being cleaned up by the federal government at taxpayer's expense. (It's not uncommon to re-clean the sites that have already been cleaned before, either.) Were any CEOs of any of those companies brought to justice for the environmental pollution they have produced?!

A LOT of those superfund sites were government sites, mostly military bases. And those sites were grossly polluted before significant environmental regulations went into place.

Look at the notorious Love Canal. The company got permission to dump toxic waste into a pit. And after Occidental bought the company, they were required to pay for the clean up.

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#54

Post by mahesh_rm »

redisman wrote: post #25
Gibbon1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sort of like the intermontane west generally in the US. Wasteland, right? Well the western US is generally considered to be a delicate arid ecosystems that is really easy to mess up permanently. A lot of it was really messed up from timber cutting, mining, and cattle ranching in the 1800's. And it only looks like it's recovered because no one remembers what it was like before. There is a valley where the Mormons fo…

The native prairie biome has pretty much been completely eradicated in the US. Pretty impressive for what once dominated the land from Wisconsin to Montana

As a non American, how did it look like?

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#55

Post by barry-cotter »

ves wrote: post #35
eloff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the waterways in the USA have never been cleaner in the last hundred years. There are regulations and they are enforced, imperfectly like everything. I live in Canada where we take the environment more seriously still.

“The last hundred years” is an interesting frame of reference; why not use the last five hundred, or two thousand?

Because wretched nigh on universal poverty, above 50% infant mortality, famine every 20 years killing perhaps a quarter of the pain, endless toil, all these things are bad. Given the choice between living like the average peasant in 1800 and maintaining something like our current first world standard of living and health while so destroying the environment that the first planet we need to terraform is Earth people will choose the latter. Most of the world’s population was peasants in 1900. No one had antibiotics. Air conditioning was practically unknown.

The state of nature is hellish and people will absolutely pave everything while breathing air that tastes like an ashtray to avoid it.

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#57

Post by eloff »

spodek wrote: post #48
eloff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the waterways in the USA have never been cleaner in the last hundred years. There are regulations and they are enforced, imperfectly like everything. I live in Canada where we take the environment more seriously still.

By exporting a lot of industry, we pollute more, just other people's water.

Yes, this is true. In countries like China or Vietnam with lax environmental controls.

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#58

Post by eloff »

ozborn wrote: post #49
eloff wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm in favor of the pipeline, the alternative is shipping oil via rail which is riskier and burns more oil. Sadly it doesn't stay in the ground without a pipeline. However, Canada should get smart here and do what Norway does with their oil profits. Invest it in a sovereign wealth fund that's diversified away from oil. Because the oil age is ending and it will hit the most expensive producers, like the oil sa…

Agree with your comments regarding Norway and renewable energy. However, I suspect that if the pipeline is built they will still ship via rail if it is profitable - thus the net effect will just be more oil coming from the oil sands. The only scenario were a pipeline could help the environment (relative to the status quo - it's still bad) would be it rail usage was displaced by pipeline usage. This could be true only…

That's an interesting take on the pipeline. If market demand for heavy oil and oil sands supply are unlimited, then it would indeed function like that. Both are finite though. It's a possibility, I just don't have the information to say which would be the more likely outcome.

There's little doubt the pipeline is what's best for Canada. What's best for humanity is another question.

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#59

Post by pvg »

ache7 wrote: post #51
pvg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably but 'both are in Russia' is fairly poor relatedness. Norilsk is a mining center and one of the most polluted places on the planet. It's literally made of spills - rare earth metals are extracted straight out of the decades-long polluted soil. Kamchatka is more like a less-developed, even more BFE, Russian Alaska.

If it's an outdated pesticides, as suggested in another comment, then it's very related. Because it's a leakage from an old Soviet storage tanks.

Heh, yes, 'everything is related to everything somehow' is among the trickiest problems of online forums.

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#60

Post by samatman »

eloff wrote: post #34
minerjoe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country do you live in? In mine, the good ol' USA, captured regulators just make it all legal. See fracking, for example.

Yet the waterways in the USA have never been cleaner in the last hundred years. There are regulations and they are enforced, imperfectly like everything. I live in Canada where we take the environment more seriously still.

There's very little left in the US as ugly as the Athabaska oil sands.

Not a competition, really; we've both got to do better.

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