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VitalSigns posted:Except according to you this is a bad and wasteful money-losing project that isn't worth the cultural desecration or environmental risks, so those "randoms" are correct in this case. The problem is that randoms being able to disrupt infrastructure construction successfully by sitting their rear end down on the construction site and getting away with it is an incredibly awful precedent to set, no matter what or why they're disrupting in this specific case. A rule that says "don't physically disrupt infrastructure construction unless you're right" is completely useless because obviously everyone thinks they're right when they go do it, so the only actual policy choices are "allow anyone to physically disrupt infrastructure construction" or "allow nobody to physically disrupt infrastructure construction".
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 14:50 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 19:25 |
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Well no that's not true at all. Blocking construction brings attention to the issue, if we reevaluate the construction because of this attention and we find out that you're right and it is a worthless project that is not worth the cultural and historical damage or the environmental risks then we can stop construction for those reasons without giving everyone a heckler's veto on everything forever. The civil rights movement is an analogy here: the civil disobedience drew national attention to bad laws and we said "holy poo poo these laws are bad" and repealed them because they were bad and not because they were disobeyed. We are capable of repealing bad laws without being compelled to now overturn every law good or bad any rando chooses to disobey. Your argument makes zero sense, if we agree the project has negative benefit then it shouldn't be done, there's no moral imperative that we must press ahead and always do wasteful and awful things whenever opposition exists because anything less would be allowing heckler's vetoes.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 16:12 |
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Also: Something being classified as "Infrastructure" does not essentially make it "Good" or "Necessary"
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 16:14 |
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CommieGIR posted:Also: Something being classified as "Infrastructure" does not essentially make it "Good" or "Necessary" Bizarrely, he acknowledges this and argues that we should waste money on bad unnecessary projects out of spite to make sure we never agree with opponents of bad unnecessary infrastructure projects
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 16:18 |
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VitalSigns posted:Bizarrely, he acknowledges this and argues that we should waste money on bad unnecessary projects out of spite to make sure we never agree with opponents of bad unnecessary infrastructure projects Remember: They are arguing that this Pipeline MUST be done, claiming that Pipelines are "Safer" yet continuously ignore that time and again, despite all the pipelines they never switch away from the "Less Safe" transport methods. Because they've been duped. Its not about what is safer, its about pumping as much oil to market as possible, drat the transportation method.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 16:29 |
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I mostly lurk SA in general, but C-SPAM a fair bit. Question for the thread, how many of you have taken a scan of the EA document for this project? This isn't a gotcha kinda question, I'm genuinely interested.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 16:52 |
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VitalSigns posted:Bizarrely, he acknowledges this and argues that we should waste money on bad unnecessary projects out of spite to make sure we never agree with opponents of bad unnecessary infrastructure projects Infrastructure is good overall, despite occasional exceptions. If you dispute this, you should imagine your life without clean water, electricity, hospitals, roads/public transport, phones, the internet, and overnight shipping before feeling ashamed and admitting to yourself you're a dumbass. Infrastructure is usually very big and tends to piss people off because their backyards get bulldozed to make space for it. If everyone who gets pissed off over infrastructure construction and sits their rear end down in their backyard over it gets to stop infrastructure construction, then barely any infrastructure will ever get built. Consequently, the notion that people who sit their rear end down in their backyard (or, even worse, in someone else's backyard) to stop infrastructure should expect not to be removed is bad and wrong. If you are pissed off over the occasional exceptions of bad infrastructure, go write to your congresscritter or protest in front of your legislature over bad laws, or get yourself arrested over and over again while sitting yourself down on bad infrastructure construction sites in an act of civil disobedience. You still don't get to expect to sit your rear end down on the construction site unmolested unless you convince the rest of society to change the law.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 17:53 |
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blowfish posted:Infrastructure is good overall, despite occasional exceptions. If you dispute this, you should imagine your life without clean water, electricity, hospitals, roads/public transport, phones, the internet, and overnight shipping before feeling ashamed and admitting to yourself you're a dumbass. I see you're in favor of "slum clearances".
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 17:56 |
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Doc Hawkins posted:I just want them to explain where they think the IEEFA went wrong in their analysis. As the article notes, "In short, unless oil prices spike" - Such as OPEC cutting production, as happened two days ago? Or our new Dear Leader causing an crisis in the Middle East, as is almost certain to happen? Laminar posted:I mostly lurk SA in general, but C-SPAM a fair bit.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 18:01 |
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blowfish posted:big oil is lovely and terrible given the current state of big oil and the current state of the planet That's what I suspected. I assume you know that a lot of people would rank these the other way around? Why are they (okay, we) wrong? blowfish posted:the more general bad of randoms with very strong opinions being able to shut down infrastructure construction outweighs the specific bad of building an oil pipeline over places There are countries where the peasantry are given no rights which they could use to override the decisions of capital, but I don't think either of us live in one. As far as I can tell, if you're bothered by "randoms with strong opinions," you're bothered by democracy. Which, okay, you aren't the only one in the subforum with that position, but I assume you know how popular democratic principles are with most folks, so...what's the pitch? What's the downside we're missing? What's the tragic consequence of people being able to make things happen or not happen?
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 18:18 |
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You are failing to distinguish between people objecting via democratic means and people obstructing via illegal means. VitalSigns posted:Okay but if we're going with complete moral relativism we also have no empirical way of showing that breaking the law is better than following it. You are conflating law and morality again. You are also conflating unjust laws with unjust outcomes. It isn't always immoral to break the law, but it is always illegal. The purpose of the law is not to punish people for doing immoral things. Similarly, civil disobedience can be done for right or wrong reasons, but that does not change the illegality of it. If the law is just, which in this case it is, then we have a moral obligation to enforce it even if you believe that the specific outcome in this case is bad and unjust. See my earlier example of allowing an obviously guilty criminal to go free because the evidence against him was improperly obtained. If you believe that the law itself is unjust, rather than this specific outcome, then you need to point out which specific law is unjust in this case, and what a more just alternative would be. VitalSigns posted:Uh weren't you arguing like forever that it was good that the jury nullified all charges against the Malheur protestors who occupied property that wasn't theirs, converted federal vehicles, etc? Doc Hawkins posted:I just want them to explain where they think the IEEFA went wrong in their analysis. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Dec 3, 2016 |
# ? Dec 3, 2016 18:18 |
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Dead Reckoning posted:Whether some analysts think the pipeline will be profitable is wholly irrelevant to whether the company has a right to build it. I'd say it's very relevant considering profit is the motivating factor
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 18:23 |
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Gobbeldygook posted:I read the first 100 pages and it reinforced my support for it. There is no meaningful cultural damage and the environmental damage, particularly to Lake Oahe, is purely hypothetical. If a company wants to risk billions of dollars on a pipeline, so be it. I did as well. I'm an environmental assessment practitioner in Canada (although I have a good understanding of the mess that is US EA laws). What I find fascinating is that the support or opposition of a project these days has very little to do with the actual science. From what I read of the EA, I do agree that they needed to do a much better job of delineating source water protection zones, however they are using state of the art construction and monitoring/spill response. e.g. using HDD for the crossing, the standards they have selected for pipeline construction/spill response. There could be some massive smoking gun I'm missing (as frankly, I'm not going to review the full document in detail if I'm not getting paid/the project isn't near me) but overall it looks like a project where the proponent has come in using best practices. Before somebody gets on the shill train, one of my biggest clients is an aboriginal group in Canada that I do 3rd party EA/project reviews for. I also work for proponents depending on the day of the week. It frustrates me to see science play such a back role to who can yell the loudest. No question, there are bad projects that should fail the EA stage, but it seems these days every single thing is opposed, and few people (both people for and against projects) bother to read the multi million dollar EA documentation and studies that are done to describe the environmental effects of a project. It could be a mistake careposting, but honestly I find it very frustrating.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 18:29 |
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Poland Spring posted:I'd say it's very relevant considering profit is the motivating factor Then write a helpful letter to the company informing them they're bad at capitalism. The point is it's the decision of whoever is building the pipeline whether they want to continue the pipeline (or the courts if they get sued over it), not the decision of forums poster Poland Spring. Also, this: Doc Hawkins posted:That's what I suspected. I assume you know that a lot of people would rank these the other way around? Why are they (okay, we) wrong? Generally (), general rules trump single issue rules that fail when extrapolated to other cases. Specifically, NIMBY idiots successfully blocking this pipeline (a minor contributor to climate change and habitat loss) sets a precedent that lets NIMBY idiots successfully block nuclear power plant construction (a major contributor to fixing climate change and habitat loss), or even NIMBY redneck idiots to successfully block solar farm construction (a less major but still useful contributor to fixing climate change). Doc Hawkins posted:There are countries where the peasantry are given no rights which they could use to override the decisions of capital, but I don't think either of us live in one. As far as I can tell, if you're bothered by "randoms with strong opinions," you're bothered by democracy. Which, okay, you aren't the only one in the subforum with that position, but I assume you know how popular democratic principles are with most folks, so...what's the pitch? What's the downside we're missing? What's the tragic consequence of people being able to make things happen or not happen? You are free to sue the company. You are free to vote, write to your congresscritter, protest in front of the capitol, or organise a campaign against oil pipelines/capitalism/the us legal system's faults to put pressure on politicians. You are not free to take the law into your own hands unless you are ready to keep getting arrested for it until you either convince broader society to change the law or give up. Laminar posted:I did as well. I'm an environmental assessment practitioner in Canada (although I have a good understanding of the mess that is US EA laws). What I find fascinating is that the support or opposition of a project these days has very little to do with the actual science. From what I read of the EA, I do agree that they needed to do a much better job of delineating source water protection zones, however they are using state of the art construction and monitoring/spill response. e.g. using HDD for the crossing, the standards they have selected for pipeline construction/spill response. There could be some massive smoking gun I'm missing (as frankly, I'm not going to review the full document in detail if I'm not getting paid/the project isn't near me) but overall it looks like a project where the proponent has come in using best practices. That's because it's very emotionally satisfying to call the other side bad and evil (possibly even colonialist), while it's much less emotionally satisfying to read through documents that are longer than 140 characters and concluding that, uh, i guess some moderate improvements could be made.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 19:01 |
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Laminar posted:I did as well. I'm an environmental assessment practitioner in Canada (although I have a good understanding of the mess that is US EA laws). What I find fascinating is that the support or opposition of a project these days has very little to do with the actual science. From what I read of the EA, I do agree that they needed to do a much better job of delineating source water protection zones, however they are using state of the art construction and monitoring/spill response. e.g. using HDD for the crossing, the standards they have selected for pipeline construction/spill response. There could be some massive smoking gun I'm missing (as frankly, I'm not going to review the full document in detail if I'm not getting paid/the project isn't near me) but overall it looks like a project where the proponent has come in using best practices. Amazing, it only took half an hour for this post to generate a retarded redtext (e: screenshotted 18:04). blowfish posted:That's because it's very emotionally satisfying to call the other side bad and evil (possibly even colonialist), while it's much less emotionally satisfying to read through documents that are longer than 140 characters and concluding that, uh, i guess some moderate improvements could be made. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Dec 3, 2016 |
# ? Dec 3, 2016 19:06 |
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The best part is I have lurked for years, and I make one post about my profession and end up with this wicked title. If this doesn't sum up the whole issue in a weird internet microcosm I don't even know
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 19:14 |
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blowfish posted:Amazing, it only took half an hour for this post to generate a retarded redtext (e: screenshotted 18:04). loooooool you giant whiny babies
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 19:18 |
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I use prejudice and base instinct to justify my shitposting, just like D&D posters. And like D&D posters, I'm only good if I'm a total loving idiot.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 19:28 |
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blowfish posted:NIMBY redneck idiots to successfully block solar farm construction (a less major but still useful contributor to fixing climate change). Huh? Rednecks often love solar panels. They, being a way to electrically power your house off the grid, really appeal to survivalists. I went on a canoe trip in the middle of the rural Midwest, and the guy who ran the canoe rental company was just gushing about solar cells and how he was going to power his place with solar.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 20:31 |
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silence_kit posted:Huh? Rednecks often love solar panels. They, being a way to electrically power your house off the grid, really appeal to survivalists. I went on a canoe trip in the middle of the rural Midwest, and the guy who ran the canoe rental company was just gushing about solar cells and how he was going to power his place with solar. Depends whether survivalism in the face of Obummer DEATH PANELS or accusing Obummer of spending ARE TAXES on Solyndra takes priority.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 20:34 |
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silence_kit posted:Huh? Rednecks often love solar panels. They, being a way to electrically power your house off the grid, really appeal to survivalists. I went on a canoe trip in the middle of the rural Midwest, and the guy who ran the canoe rental company was just gushing about solar cells and how he was going to power his place with solar. Being able to get by with some deep cycle marine batteries, or a PowerWall, and some generation is a huge deal for rural areas when it take can a week to get power back after a major storm.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 20:37 |
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blowfish posted:Depends whether survivalism in the face of Obummer DEATH PANELS or accusing Obummer of spending ARE TAXES on Solyndra takes priority. You can certainly be pro-solar and think that Solyndra was a dumb company and that the US government was really stupid to give them a lot of money. It wasn't that they tried something ambitious and failed, it was that in principle their technology was a bad idea and didn't make any sense. You can also be pro-solar and think that the really heavy government subsidy of solar power was bad, although you kind of have to respect that the government subsidies were largely responsible for quickly driving down the cost of solar. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Dec 3, 2016 |
# ? Dec 3, 2016 20:42 |
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So just to be clear, does anyone in the thread think the 1868 treaty is invalid as a replacement to the 1851 treaty or not? Laminar posted:The best part is I have lurked for years, and I make one post about my profession and end up with this wicked title. If this doesn't sum up the whole issue in a weird internet microcosm I don't even know Goddam dude that is a wicked sick redtext, why did I have to get a lame one. Didn't even tell me to kill myself smdh
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 20:55 |
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DeusExMachinima posted:So just to be clear, does anyone in the thread think the 1868 treaty is invalid as a replacement to the 1851 treaty or not? yours has anime, a much graver insult~
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 21:12 |
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blowfish posted:The problem is that randoms being able to disrupt infrastructure construction successfully it's not infrastructure for the public benefit. it's private infrastructure whose necessity and path was decided in the first place by "randoms," it's just these randoms happen to be rich. The precedent being set (or rather maintained) by the pipeline is upholding the state's slavish devotion to private fossil fuel companies - a tradition rife with eminent domain abuse, regulatory capture and unnecessary subsidies. Rodatose fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Dec 3, 2016 |
# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:32 |
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Ah yes, the Natives are the bad guys here, not respecting the rule of law. They need to pull up their pants, stop being so uppity, and play by the rules. The US government, having always respected its treaty agreements and obligations toward Native Americans, holds the moral high ground. The entire legalistic argument is really dumb, it's tone-deaf internet navel-gazing that ignores the actual issues being advocated by protesters and is meaningless outside of internet forum debates.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:44 |
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Wait, how does a pipeline through empty land equate to genocide, exactly?
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:46 |
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Pellisworth posted:Ah yes, the Natives are the bad guys here, not respecting the rule of law. They need to pull up their pants, stop being so uppity, and play by the rules. The US government, having always respected its treaty agreements and obligations toward Native Americans, holds the moral high ground. Ah yes, the pipeline, which is routed outside the reservation, and even outside the borders of the latest treaty that the natives looked on favourably, which is going under a river section that will soon become irrelevant for drinking water extraction, is somehow specifically more bad than a pipeline through an arbitrary stretch of other land that is not inside the reservation. No, the protestors are dumb and wrong in many ways.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:49 |
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CommieGIR posted:Remember: They are arguing that this Pipeline MUST be done, claiming that Pipelines are "Safer" yet continuously ignore that time and again, despite all the pipelines they never switch away from the "Less Safe" transport methods. It's not exactly "pumping as much oil to market as possible" it's about getting the best price. (Though I am sure if there was some market paying outrageously high, companies would try every piece of transportation possible to get their product there) http://www.wsj.com/articles/crude-slump-pipeline-expansion-mark-end-of-u-s-oil-train-boom-1469484016 Trains were great in trying to get the best price for your oil up here in north dakota, since you could send it so many more places than pipeline, but with more pipelines going to more markets the advantage is less, so trains have definitely fallen out of favor. "There could soon be more than enough space to carry away all Bakken oil through pipelines now in the works. Phillips 66 is partnering with pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners LP to develop a pair of pipelines that will bring North Dakota crude to Illinois and then down to Texas. The endeavor, which will cost close to $5 billion, is expected to take a major bite out of oil train traffic, even though the pipelines will ultimately bring oil to the Midwest and the Gulf of Mexico, rather than to the East and West coasts, where trains have primarily taken it. Phillips 66 said earlier this year it may still be cheaper to take that oil and put it on a barge for delivery by sea to the coasts than to send it directly there by train." So, how do you feel about barges of oil cruising along our coasts? If you like those ntsb reports, look at barge collisions along the Mississippi.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 22:56 |
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Silento Boborachi posted:So, how do you feel about barges of oil cruising along our coasts? If you like those ntsb reports, look at barge collisions along the Mississippi. No, here's the problem, We covered this earlier in the thread: They can SAY they are going to stop using these transport methods, but they won't, and they haven't. They have and will continue using ALL methods to ship as much as possible. This isn't a matter of "Safe Method" versus "Unsafe" its a matter of "How much can we get to market as quickly as possible" and that means "Use every method available" not just one method. And here's the other thing we've covered multiple times: Its NOT safer, it LOOKS safer, and while spills occur less, they are generally overall larger spills than tanker or train. And we've had numerous spills in just 2016 due to pipelines, and they are slower to report and slower to stop. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Dec 3, 2016 |
# ? Dec 3, 2016 23:01 |
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CommieGIR posted:No, here's the problem, We covered this earlier in the thread: Fossil fuels are bad but that doesn't make protestor-based decisionmaking on infrastructure good.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 00:11 |
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CommieGIR posted:No, here's the problem, We covered this earlier in the thread: I think you're simplifying things too much, read the wsj article. I don't think any company will ever completely abandon any transport method, but rail has lost its status as the go-to transport method, at least here in the Bakken. They could be shipping more by rail, I can dig up more numbers if you want, but I know wayyy too many of the rail loading facilities that have been sitting idle if not for the last 6 months than the past year. Rail shipments just arn't worth it when compared to volume that pipelines can carry. So if your argument is that companies have been talking up the pipeline because they say they'll abandon the "less safe" transport methods all together, then I'd say you're right because no company is going to full stop until we would hypothetically have pipelines from every well to every end user, which is never going to happen, and those companies are fools to think so. But if your argument is just criticizing oil companies for not completely abandoning train and truck, I'd just have to say that's business, I don't know what you're expecting of the companies. If you've got some article that says the companies will never ever use trains/trucks once DAPL or keystone or whatever pipeline is in, I'd love to see it, because the writer must have some bizarre insight I am not aware of. And in terms of safety, I don't think anyone calls pipelines the "safe method", they're just safer than all the other traditional methods. It's hard to pin down what is meant by "safer" as well. Are you talking risk to human life? Then I'd say (crude) pipelines are safer, (excluding natural gas pipelines because that's a different beast). And environmentally, it depends on how big the release is, and what it hits. 21,000 barrels of crude into the missouri river would be one thing, 21,000 barrels into a wheat field (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303382004579127604108354512) is another. And I don't know what you mean by "slower to report, slower to stop". Really small "pinhole" leaks are hard to find and take awhile to detect because out of, say 100 barrels of oil that goes through a section of line maybe a couple gallons comes out, leak detection systems aren't going to catch that. It's not until hundreds of thousands of barrels have passed, resulting in a detectable plume around the leak site that people are going to notice (unless it's in the water, then people notice pretty quickly an oil sheen). But the big releases are caught relatively quickly, the problem being those pipelines can only be closed off at certain points, which means whatever is in the line from the last closure to the break point is going to come out no matter what you do. Again, I am speaking from a north dakota perspective, other states with a lot older infrastructure/regulations may be entirely different.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 02:25 |
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Silento Boborachi posted:I don't know what you're expecting of the companies. It rhymes with "expropriation" my comrade. This thread is pretty interesting in that there's a clash between two factions that operate differently on a very basic level. Or three, if you count old-DND types as being separate from the tribal members who may not necessarily think socialism is the answer, old types as distinguished from nu-DND as a whole post-election Abuela toxxes. Anyway of the three groups you've got your federalist capitalist law system, then there's the tribes--yearning for past glory days--talking about how if they demand an environmental assessment by the army corps of "all lands the buffalo roamed" then they should get it, and then the "socialism would solve this problem" people. The land the pipeline is being built on isn't Sioux ancestral lands. They're Crow ancestral lands. The Sioux massacred them about a hundred years before the first Fort Laramie treaty and took it. If this pipeline was going through the Black Hills both because that really is their ancestral lands and because of Custer's bullshit war and subsequent gold rush, my feelings on this would be different even if the legal situation remained unchanged. But as-is, the Sioux people's public servants failed them when they failed to interact with the ACE for 2 years. Replace those leaders with competent ones so any affected burial sites can be pointed out next time someone builds something on their own property. But the fabled past of the lands the buffalo roamed belonging collectively to the tribe ain't coming back. Ever. In South we call people hopelessly stuck in the past "Lost Causers." DeusExMachinima fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Dec 4, 2016 |
# ? Dec 4, 2016 03:06 |
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blowfish posted:You are not free to take the law into your own hands unless you are ready to keep getting arrested for it until you either convince broader society to change the law or give up. So you dislike these protestors because you question their commitment to protesting? They haven't broken the law enough?
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 03:31 |
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Doc Hawkins posted:I just want them to explain where they think the IEEFA went wrong in their analysis. What do you find persuasive about their paper?
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 04:06 |
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blowfish posted:But enough about your skin DAPL generally uses acreage dedications and take or pay arrangements. It doesn't matter what oil prices are, the shippers are required to pay a fee to reserve capacity that is guaranteed. Pipelines are the one stable sector of the energy industry at the moment. I don't know the ins and out of the contractual arrangements here, but I highly doubt the pipeline was built without a transportation agreement already in place.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 04:30 |
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blowfish posted:1 Police officers have been killing unarmed non-white people, lying about the circumstances under which they killed said person, and then got off scot-free for years. Most of those cases never even went to trial. Eric Garner - Black man died in a chokehold at the hands of police, recorded in HD and spread nationwide - no trial. Tamir Rice - Black child that supposedly was uncooperative with the police and held an object that looked like a firearm., killed by police. Later discovered the police lied about numerous facts regarding the entire situation - no trial. Walter Scott - Black man died in a police shoot where he supposedly attacked officers. Witness footage shows Scott was running away from police and shot in the back - case in trial now, looking like mistrial because one of the jurors is point blank refusing to consider a guilty verdict. American police officers rarely face trial for killing an unarmed man in the street to begin with, even after it's been discovered that the officer in question lied on the official report of the incident. If an officer killed someone at this protest, there will be absolutely no repercussions. Raerlynn fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Dec 4, 2016 |
# ? Dec 4, 2016 06:07 |
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blowfish posted:Fossil fuels are bad but that doesn't make protestor-based decisionmaking on infrastructure good. Obviously, the DA pipeline protests are being made by multiple people with multiple motivations and goals, and general opposition to fossil fuels is probably not the most common or important of these. But, as far as your statement goes, If you start from the premise that "fossil fuels are bad" (and taking for granted that the main reason for this is climate change--which is an existential threat) then why is protester- driven interference with fossil fuel infrastructure necessarily bad compared to "acceptable" things like government-driven regulation changes or technologically-driven improvements in renewable energy? The implication seems to be that this sort of direct action is either counter-productive, illegitimate, or both. Since protests like this seem extremely unlikely to make fossil fuel infrastructure easier to develop or more attractive, I don't see how they can be called counter-productive. The worst you could say that they may be simply ineffective...but compared to what else? Given the reality of the present (lack of) action on climate change, it seems like, if anything, this sort of protest offers more bang-for-your-buck than most other things an average person could participate in. I mean, the bottom line is that a relatively small number of people, in a short amount of time, with more-or-less incoherent goals, minimal planning, and no great marshaling of resources, is stopping the developing of a pipeline (for now). As far as efficacy goes, can you really point to a better way of achieving the same end result? And if the absence of effective and urgent action curbing fossil fuel use is viewed as existentially catastrophic, its hard to deem any sort of effective action illegitimate. Morbus fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Dec 4, 2016 |
# ? Dec 4, 2016 06:33 |
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Morbus posted:And if the absence of effective and urgent action curbing fossil fuel use is viewed as existentially catastrophic, its hard to deem any sort of effective action illegitimate. So if a direct action group started just randomly killing refinery workers to intimidate them into not showing up for work, and it was effective in doing that, you would consider that legitimate? And no, CommieGIR, I'm not saying protesting is morally equivalent to murder, I'm asking Morbus whether, under his view that anything to stop the use of fossil fuels is legitimate, depriving someone of their property is OK but depriving them of their life is not.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 08:00 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 19:25 |
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Morbus posted:The implication seems to be that this sort of direct action is either counter-productive, illegitimate, or both. It's super weird to me too, but I think there's a lot of people committed to that position. I still remember the first time I met someone who thought it was laughable to make a distinction between "illegal" and "immoral." At least he at least had the excuse of being a teenager from Georgia. Dead Reckoning posted:So if a direct action group started just randomly killing refinery workers to intimidate them into not showing up for work, and it was effective in doing that, you would consider that legitimate? Is this refinery in Syria?
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 08:25 |