Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 346 posts

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#91

Post by luckylion »

pessimizer wrote: post #64
refuse wrote: post #5

I've heard about this, but it is surprising how little coverage it gets compared to other things. If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda (you'd also have to weigh it against other stories developing at around the same time). I have to wonder why a story of environmental disas…

> If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda It's not like it's subtle. There have been hundreds of Chinese weather balloon stories in the past week. Have there been hundreds of stories about this? US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose mon…

> US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen.

The carrier will lose money. But a news company would make money, wouldn't they? Bad news is good news after all, and environmental disasters are bad news.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#93

Post by smoldesu »

sebkomianos wrote: post #73
smoldesu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox has reports on it from a few days ago too: https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/ohio-mayor-norfolk-sou... It's more likely that nobody really cared about this until it went viral on Twitter and TikTok, when people felt a social obligation to show support. It's not bad to recognize the issue, but our willingness to shoot the messenger has prevented us from being able to learn anything in the first place. How many…

Thanks for the reply! May I ask why "you don't care", though?

Mostly because of the Flint thing in my other comment, but also because I spent an inordinate amount of my childhood on 4chan listening to people peddle their own coverup theories.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#94

Post by rhaway84773 »

jonny_eh wrote: post #19
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34772687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34759611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34676114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34762965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34770772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34783940

“You’ve not heard about it”

The previous HN comments were also filled with “the media is not covering this!”. With the HN post linking to the Guardian and the top comment I saw at the time being a link to the NYTimes.

There may be legitimate arguments about whether it should get more coverage relative to other news, but it isn’t a conspiracy. It’s simple. People don’t want read/hear about this stuff in the US and US news, unfortunately, is a completely eyeball driven enterprise.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#95

Post by anigbrowl »

tomcam wrote: post #11
waldothedog wrote: post #4

This isn't too far from me. Curious to hear thoughts from folks with deeper backgrounds in chemistry than I have (high school).

[flagged]

Don't understand why the world's media hasn't converged on the area.

At least partly because it's not clear that it's safe to hang out there.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#96

Post by zrobotics »

King-Aaron wrote: post #28

This was posted to reddit the other day: https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/110nlai/... The footage has a lot of NSFW language, so just watch out for that. Within that thread there's some good discussion about some of the compounds that are being released into the air, and it is indeed very grim. Interestingly here in Australia, I've heard about it a lot more in traditional media than my American fri…

God, that footage is grim. Every railroader I know (BNSF & UP) has been super vocal about the working conditions for years. I know a guy who left his engineer position with the BN just due to how much the schedule sucks, this guy took a ~50% pay cut simply because the schedule and working conditions are so bad. All of this is preventable, but the railroads would rather chase higher profits and cut down on salary expenses.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#98

Post by jandrese »

bruce511 wrote: post #35
tomcam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I am intrigued by your outrage (seriously). I'm curious to know what you are hoping the world's media will accomplish there? On the one hand train derailment, chemical fire, environmental damage - it makes for a story but really not a terribly interesting one (to me). It's certainly an unwelcome event, but there doesn't seem to be anything deeper than what you see on the surface. Is there a deeper story here? Is ther…

Outrage about this story is directed at Norfolk Southern for operating the train without modern safety gear, for the Trump administration for rescinding the Obama era rules that would have required them to install modern safety gear, and the Biden administration for breaking up the strike that the workers were making over the safety conditions (among other things).

This accident was going to happen eventually and all of the people who had the opportunity to stop it were either denied or were actively fighting against preventing it from happening because it might have impacted the $10 billion stock buyback[1] that lined so many billionaire's pockets.

[1] http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/news/norfolk-souther...

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#99

Post by smoldesu »

mc32 wrote: post #85
smoldesu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Flint's water empties into all 5 lakes. Still not worth talking about polluting the world's largest freshwater body until we can throw darts at a talking head though!

The amount of basin-wide city waste and industrial waste that ends up there dwarfs the stuff you're getting from Flint.

No, I disagree. Flint was a disaster because it went for years without being addressed - if this has a cleanup process starting less than a week after it happens, it's already being handled better.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#100

Post by throwawaylinux »

refuse wrote: post #5

I've heard about this, but it is surprising how little coverage it gets compared to other things. If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda (you'd also have to weigh it against other stories developing at around the same time). I have to wonder why a story of environmental disas…

It's because Political-Corporate Environmentalism is not actually about helping the environment, it is about coopting the environmentalist movement to consolidate wealth and power.

Where those two things intersect is coincidental. Reducing greenhouse gas pollution might be a great thing, but the ruling class sure isn't counting on that effort costing them any money. So if they can't see a way to make money or win votes by pushing this train derailment story they won't.

Post reply on HN