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Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Fister Roboto posted:

Just like Gumball Gumption said, saying "well humans are just bad at assessing risk" is technically true, but it's uselessly broad and doesn't really have a direct solution. And in this very post you say that the profit motive of capitalism exacerbates that problem. Maybe that doesn't rise to the standard necessary to qualify as a root cause, but I think it's fair to say that capitalism is a large contributing factor here at least. I don't disagree with anything else you said, obviously other economic systems are going to be constrained by physical reality and affected by human behavior as well. The difference is that capitalism is specifically inequitable in its distribution of resources and management of risk. To put it another way: under communism, it's a bug; under capitalism, it's a feature.

Like I said above, all of these things are permitted, exacerbated, encouraged, or outright glorified under capitalism.

Actually, it's a very specific answer with some very targeted solutions. There's entire fields of study dedicated to it.

There have to be, because it's the actual issue at hand, whether you like it or not. Nothing productive comes from deciding that since the root cause is difficult to solve, we should ignore it and pour both the blame and our efforts onto completely unrelated issues instead.

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OddObserver
Apr 3, 2009

Srice posted:



Heck, anyone who hasn't read the article should since there's some infuriating stuff in it that needs more attention:

Like the part where someone was given unnecessary antibiotics by a medical professional? (...I hope the treatment of the baby wasn't worse...)

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Discendo Vox posted:

Okay, great. celadon has alleged that the fact that coverage isn't as lovely as they want it to be, as ignorant as some of it already is, is evidence of seeming conspiracy. It's a demand that coverage be worse, working backward from such a need.

The coverage of the incident, and the discussion of it, doesn't need to be as lovely as they, or you, want it to be.

Why would anyone want coverage to be lovely? This is an incoherent accusation. You can just disagree!

Baronash
Feb 29, 2012

So what do you want to be called?

celadon posted:

I'm not asserting the reality of what the specific chemicals being produced are or their persistence in the environment. I do have a little bit of questioning as to whether its 100% valid to translate laboratory decomposition of vinyl chloride to burning a tanker car full of the stuff, but again, the specific nature of what is actually happening is somewhat beside my point.



My point is that this image is pretty evocative, and a 'leave the area or die' message is also pretty evocative, and there is a certain political energy that is traditionally drawn from images of this magnitude that appears to be lacking in the current iteration. My hypothesis is that the situation surrounding this event has lead to an absence of available political actors to exploit it appropriately and thats why it doesn't seem like there is enough coverage here.

The actual risk involved is not as important for the purposes of public perception as the fact that theres images of horrible black clouds and urgent messaging regarding immediate evacuation.

This is a bizarre take. I feel like there's no way to read this that isn't arguing that the much-maligned (on this subforum especially) cable news model of pointing a camera at the sexiest story and proclaiming the sky is falling is actually the best version of the news. Who exactly benefits from breathless media coverage speculating on every aspect of the crash and cleanup from the moment it happens? Will it turn back the clock and put the vinyl chloride back in the tanks if Wolf Blitzer does a splitscreen with the dust cloud and an "ECOLOGICAL DISASTER" chyron? Will the US government perp-walk rail executives if Anderson Cooper does a live broadcast in front of a burning railcar?

celadon
Jan 2, 2023

Baronash posted:

This is a bizarre take. I feel like there's no way to read this that isn't arguing that the much-maligned (on this subforum especially) cable news model of pointing a camera at the sexiest story and proclaiming the sky is falling is actually the best version of the news. Who exactly benefits from breathless media coverage speculating on every aspect of the crash and cleanup from the moment it happens? Will it turn back the clock and put the vinyl chloride back in the tanks if Wolf Blitzer does a splitscreen with the dust cloud and an "ECOLOGICAL DISASTER" chyron? Will the US government perp-walk rail executives if Anderson Cooper does a live broadcast in front of a burning railcar?

Ostensibly the benefit of reporting that bad things are happening and that better things should happen instead is that in the future better things will be fought for?

Like whats the point of any of this otherwise? Yes, we won't be able to unburn that vinyl chloride but we could use this disaster to mandate the updated braking systems that weren't used. We could change the way that we transport dangerous chemicals to reduce the risk of accidents.

Conversely, the main people who benefit from not talking about industrial catastrophes are the massive corporations who underinvest in safety mechanisms and personally I'm fine with taking courses of action that don't promote their interests above those of the public.

Gerund
Sep 12, 2007

He push a man


Baronash posted:

This is a bizarre take. I feel like there's no way to read this that isn't arguing that the much-maligned (on this subforum especially) cable news model of pointing a camera at the sexiest story and proclaiming the sky is falling is actually the best version of the news. Who exactly benefits from breathless media coverage speculating on every aspect of the crash and cleanup from the moment it happens? Will it turn back the clock and put the vinyl chloride back in the tanks if Wolf Blitzer does a splitscreen with the dust cloud and an "ECOLOGICAL DISASTER" chyron? Will the US government perp-walk rail executives if Anderson Cooper does a live broadcast in front of a burning railcar?

Demanding that media coverage be able to reverse cause and effect would be a silly demand, but I wouldn't conflate that silly child's thought you invented with the possibility of real consequences for the responsible parties via the actions of the fourth estate.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

Harold Fjord posted:

Why would anyone want coverage to be lovely? This is an incoherent accusation. You can just disagree!

Because the fallout should match the fear.

I'm not talking about anyone in this thread, because im thinking of people offsite when i say this, but I'm with Vox on this. I've seen that loving black cloud six thousand times for the last few days and the fact of the matter is that this is not going to be what people want it to be. Hell, I thought things were much more dangerous today than they are because the frantic posting made me think that this happened on Sunday, which was my own fault for not reading more diligently. They want the corporation to fail, to cause a major cleanup operation and damage lives til they go out of business because they made people scared.

But what this is at the core is the first brush that most of the public has had with the realities of a lot of things they take for granted. Vinyl chloride isn't going to soak into the ground and cause 100 years of tainted water, it's already decomposed and the EPA has already cleared the water. Acid isn't going to rain from the sky. Phosgene isn't going to suffocate people like the trenches of WWI, all of that decomposed the second it touched water, what little there was. It's just not how this works. It sucks that the people in the area had negative consequences, and that the media terrified the entire Midwest for a week over it, but the area is going to be cleaned and people are going to go home. No amount of posting about the dangers of vinyl chloride by people sitting in homes packed to the brim with PVC is going to change that, or ban the use of the material.

We have space to look at the railroads and how they handle the material, and to see how they can change things so that shipping is safer, but this just isn't going to turn into a new Love Canal like people are wanting it to be, in order to justify their fear at being exposed to a world of danger that they never knew existed before last week, despite the *thousands* of precautions that go into making sure the danger is minimal, which is *why* this is the first time they are hearing about it despite it being used for literally over a century.

CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Feb 14, 2023

Agean90
Jun 28, 2008


so does anyone here actually have any kind of professional background to say "its not big deal brah don't be weird" or have we decided that the people of Ohio get lung disease to own the chuds

Heck Yes! Loam!
Nov 15, 2004

a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.
The town should be thankful the rail companies even drive their trains through there. A chemical explosion will only bring more economic activity to the area due to the recovery efforts. The rail company should probably get a tax cut because of how much they are benefitting the local community.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

Agean90 posted:

so does anyone here actually have any kind of professional background to say "its not big deal brah don't be weird" or have we decided that the people of Ohio get lung disease to own the chuds

I'm a chemist and I believe Vox works for a chemical regulatory body, not sure about anyone else.

This isn't a matter of owning the chuds, it's a matter of correctly looking at the situation. There are people scared shitless that their kids are going to be dead in a month from phosgene exposure 50 miles from the site because of the inaccurate information that is being spread around. This is not a matter of owning anyone, it's a matter of what is actually happening, and informing people living around there of what is going on. Being hysterical about it for no reason is not beneficial to anyone other than those living 500 miles away who want to see a corporation burn.

People are comparing this to Pripyat and saying it's going to be the same thing, with citizens dying in agony as their homes turn to ruin. Or worse, people who are hearing about the Bhopal disaster and saying that this is exactly the same, which I find grossly offensive and truly an indicator of how much people want this to go bad. No, assholes, people having a brief window where they were possibly exposed to an elevated amount of a carcinogen is not the same as thousands of men, women, and children drowning in their beds as their organs liquefy inside them.

CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Feb 14, 2023

Baronash
Feb 29, 2012

So what do you want to be called?

Agean90 posted:

so does anyone here actually have any kind of professional background to say "its not big deal brah don't be weird" or have we decided that the people of Ohio get lung disease to own the chuds

I have no background in science, but the EPA's data and details about their response are publicly available, as is water quality testing information from the Ohio EPA. MSDS sheets and other fact sheets with info about evacuation considerations are available on vinyl chloride to compare the EPA's numbers and stated exposure limits against.

Unfortunately I don't have some rando's Twitter thread to back it up, so how can I really be sure?

Fritz the Horse
Dec 26, 2019

... of course!

Agean90 posted:

so does anyone here actually have any kind of professional background to say "its not big deal brah don't be weird" or have we decided that the people of Ohio get lung disease to own the chuds

Yes, there are people in this thread with some relevant expertise but none of them are saying "its not a a big deal brah don't be weird," you've constructed a strawman. I doubt many posters want to advertise their credentials on the SA forums. It's possible for this to be a serious disaster and also not a Chernobyl-level event or a government conspiracy or whatever. There was a good Twitter thread by a chemist linked earlier that discussed the chemistry of vinyl chloride, what happens when it's burned, when it reacts with rain, and the transport and fate of the products. I suggest you read the thread before dropping hot takes.

selec
Sep 6, 2003

I think the point a lot of us are circling around can be generously described in two paraphrases:

“This is a massive opportunity for people who claim to want better labor safety regulation and better environmental protections. You have catastrophic, deeply affecting images, a tone-deaf corporate response, and it’s all happening in middle of the country. Why aren’t the politicians who say they want better protections to prevent this from happening in the future (Democrats) capitalizing on it in a way that enables them to drive better policy, why are they so quiet, relatively speaking, as they would have been had this happened during a GOP presidency, for instance?”

Vs

“The coverage has been reasonable, and the disaster is being effectively mitigated by existing protocols. We don’t want people to panic more than they already are. We want to know specific root causes of the accident before we start making policy prescriptions.”

Does this seem like a good faith reading of both sides of this argument?

This framing dispenses with the need to accuse people in camp 1 up of being closet right wingers, a silly and unhelpful thing to try, which just derails conversation. I would also note nobody has bothered to try to accuse the people in the second camp of being republicans, despite that response aligning with what you’d expect of the most normal-seeming standard Business Republicans, say never-Trumpers, your Mitt Romneys.

I would also say position 1 is not a conspiracy theory—it posits no secret coordination or hidden agenda, just possibly political cowardice.

I am in camp one, obviously.

Fritz the Horse
Dec 26, 2019

... of course!
I do not see how those two camps you've described are mutually exclusive, and I don't think trying to force a false dichotomy on the discussion is productive.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

selec posted:

I think the point a lot of us are circling around can be generously described in two paraphrases:

“This is a massive opportunity for people who claim to want better labor safety regulation and better environmental protections. You have catastrophic, deeply affecting images, a tone-deaf corporate response, and it’s all happening in middle of the country. Why aren’t the politicians who say they want better protections to prevent this from happening in the future (Democrats) capitalizing on it in a way that enables them to drive better policy, why are they so quiet, relatively speaking, as they would have been had this happened during a GOP presidency, for instance?”

Vs

“The coverage has been reasonable, and the disaster is being effectively mitigated by existing protocols. We don’t want people to panic more than they already are. We want to know specific root causes of the accident before we start making policy prescriptions.”

Does this seem like a good faith reading of both sides of this argument?

This framing dispenses with the need to accuse people in camp 1 up of being closet right wingers, a silly and unhelpful thing to try, which just derails conversation. I would also note nobody has bothered to try to accuse the people in the second camp of being republicans, despite that response aligning with what you’d expect of the most normal-seeming standard Business Republicans, say never-Trumpers, your Mitt Romneys.

I would also say position 1 is not a conspiracy theory—it posits no secret coordination or hidden agenda, just possibly political cowardice.

I am in camp one, obviously.

The question isn't whether the democrats should be using this as political capital to push for worker reforms, the question is whether the danger should be misrepresented to do so. There's fifteen ways you could push this into theoretical "what could have happened" land without also instilling very real panic into the people living in the area with what are basically lies about what actually is happening.

selec
Sep 6, 2003

Fritz the Horse posted:

I do not see how those two camps you've described are mutually exclusive, and I don't think trying to force a false dichotomy on the discussion is productive.

They are because one camp seems very fired up to make political hay on this and another isn’t. That seems to be the crux, after all people are having an argument, so the dichotomy exists, and if it’s not what I described then it seems like there’s room for you or somebody else to update my descriptions or come up with a better way of trying to clarify the positions?

Mr. Fall Down Terror
Jan 24, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
"this isn't getting media coverage"

"what are you talking about. all the media outlets are talking about this, there just isn't anything new happening"

"no no, what i mean is that they aren't talking about this enough, as in MSNBC isn't going as hard on this as some rando twitter guy is. the problem is that cable news doesn't cater specifically to my anxieties, so they must be ignoring or hiding something because their emotional state is not mirroring my own, which is suspicious. if everyone isn't as worried about this as i am, then it means my own level of fear may be unwarranted, and that cannot be true as i am reality's own protagonist"

selec
Sep 6, 2003

CuddleCryptid posted:

The question isn't whether the democrats should be using this as political capital to push for worker reforms, the question is whether the danger should be misrepresented to do so. There's fifteen ways you could push this into theoretical "what could have happened" land without also instilling very real panic into the people living in the area with what are basically lies about what actually is happening.

I agree the danger shouldn’t be misrepresented, but that’s politics. You don’t always get what you want by working to Wikipedia Citation Argument standards. You go to work with the pictures of the towering black pillar of toxic smoke you have, not the televisually-unfriendly EPA reports you can’t parse without special training.

Imagine if Pete Buttigieg woke up possessed by the spirit of Eugene Debs and went on a firebrand crusade to hold railroads accountable, keep them over the barrel, and tighten up both regulations and compliance, just absolutely brought down the hammer and waved the sickle, and was successful, would we look back and mourn this better state of affairs on the basis that he wasn’t scientifically accurate? No, I would argue that to do so would be the height of silliness.

I don’t think we’re in any danger of fewer incidents of environmental catastrophe going forward though, but it’s nice to imagine a country that is proactive instead of unreactive, which is how it feels to a lot of people here.

celadon
Jan 2, 2023

CuddleCryptid posted:

The question isn't whether the democrats should be using this as political capital to push for worker reforms, the question is whether the danger should be misrepresented to do so. There's fifteen ways you could push this into theoretical "what could have happened" land without also instilling very real panic into the people living in the area with what are basically lies about what actually is happening.

If your brakes seized up on the freeway but you were able to get to the side before anything happened, you’d still go fix your brakes. You wouldn’t be like ‘oh glad nothing bad happened!’ and carry on. Even assuming absolutely nothing happens as a result of the leak this would be justification to strengthen railway regulations. There’s no reason that train cars should be being exploded in towns.

And I think there should be more hesitancy to be like ‘everything’s fine’. The controlled decomposition of vinyl chloride in a laboratory setting may not 100% match a mass emergency burn scenario of thousands of gallons of the stuff.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
I'm not interested in promoting or tolerating misinformation, in the broader press or here, to pursue your fantasies.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

selec posted:

I agree the danger shouldn’t be misrepresented, but that’s politics. You don’t always get what you want by working to Wikipedia Citation Argument standards. You go to work with the pictures of the towering black pillar of toxic smoke you have, not the televisually-unfriendly EPA reports you can’t parse without special training.

Imagine if Pete Buttigieg woke up possessed by the spirit of Eugene Debs and went on a firebrand crusade to hold railroads accountable, keep them over the barrel, and tighten up both regulations and compliance, just absolutely brought down the hammer and waved the sickle, and was successful, would we look back and mourn this better state of affairs on the basis that he wasn’t scientifically accurate? No, I would argue that to do so would be the height of silliness.

I don’t think we’re in any danger of fewer incidents of environmental catastrophe going forward though, but it’s nice to imagine a country that is proactive instead of unreactive, which is how it feels to a lot of people here.

Except this isn't a theoretical exercise. This is people living in a 100 square mile radius, including the City of Philadelphia Pittsburg, who now believe that their air is poison and their water will give them cancer. The number one way to get people to distrust organizations like the EPA is to *lie* to them about what is going on.

"Yes the danger is now clear but if the tanks held X, which is delivered in the same way, this would have happened" is exactly the same effect without misinforming the public. You cannot just push things like this to extremes because the average citizen doesn't have the background to understand the dangers of something. And if the people they go to in order to learn about the dangers lie to them in order to make political hay then the next time when something worse *does* happen the disaster will be compounded by the mistrust in the organizations that are supposed to inform them.

No, we're not doing wildly unethical nonsense just because the democrats need a map and a flashlight to find their own asses.

CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Feb 14, 2023

Agean90
Jun 28, 2008


Fritz the Horse posted:

Yes, there are people in this thread with some relevant expertise but none of them are saying "its not a a big deal brah don't be weird," you've constructed a strawman. I doubt many posters want to advertise their credentials on the SA forums. It's possible for this to be a serious disaster and also not a Chernobyl-level event or a government conspiracy or whatever. There was a good Twitter thread by a chemist linked earlier that discussed the chemistry of vinyl chloride, what happens when it's burned, when it reacts with rain, and the transport and fate of the products. I suggest you read the thread before dropping hot takes.

idk man i work in air regulation if a facility was flaring off even a fraction of the amount of vinyl chloride this close to a town we'd be a hell of a lot more hesitant to give an all clear. Also I'm gonna be real I'd be more interested in someone with a background on environmental science or public health, since I'm more interested in the actual impact to people more than the underlying chemistry, which is neat and informative but also feels like asking a car designer how to respond to massive traffic accodent

Mr. Fall Down Terror
Jan 24, 2018

by Fluffdaddy

CuddleCryptid posted:

Except this isn't a theoretical exercise. This is people living in a 100 square mile radius, including the City of Philadelphia, who now believe that their air is poison and their water will give them cancer. The number one way to get people to distrust organizations like the EPA is to *lie* to them about what is going on.

pittsburg. philadelphia is more than 100 miles from ohio

James Garfield
May 5, 2012
Am I a manipulative abuser in real life, or do I just roleplay one on the Internet for fun? You decide!

celadon posted:

And I think there should be more hesitancy to be like ‘everything’s fine’. The controlled decomposition of vinyl chloride in a laboratory setting may not 100% match a mass emergency burn scenario of thousands of gallons of the stuff.

The EPA is not detecting contaminants above screening levels.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Do we have anything that says the EPA is doing this testing themselves directly as opposed to compiling information reported by the railroads contracto because I've seen a lot of references to the railroad having a contractor do the testing and I have significant doubts about the reliability of that contractor

James Garfield
May 5, 2012
Am I a manipulative abuser in real life, or do I just roleplay one on the Internet for fun? You decide!

Harold Fjord posted:

Do we have anything that says the EPA is doing this testing themselves directly as opposed to compiling information reported by the railroads contracto because I've seen a lot of references to the railroad having a contractor do the testing and I have significant doubts about the reliability of that contractor

The results published on the EPA website are from testing conducted by the EPA. There are a few documents provided by the railroad, which are indicated as such.

News has also reported on local agencies testing their drinking water (and not finding contamination) but I can't find the data collected anywhere.

James Garfield fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Feb 14, 2023

selec
Sep 6, 2003

CuddleCryptid posted:

Except this isn't a theoretical exercise. This is people living in a 100 square mile radius, including the City of Philadelphia, who now believe that their air is poison and their water will give them cancer. The number one way to get people to distrust organizations like the EPA is to *lie* to them about what is going on.

"Yes the danger is now clear but if the tanks held X, which is delivered in the same way, this would have happened" is exactly the same effect without misinforming the public. You cannot just push things like this to extremes because the average citizen doesn't have the background to understand the dangers of something. And if the people they go to in order to learn about the dangers lie to them in order to make political hay then the next time when something worse *does* happen the disaster will be compounded by the mistrust in the organizations that are supposed to inform them.

Like I said, I prefer the truth, but our society is packed to the gills with lies already. They’re built into the very fundament of the racial caste society we live in, which denies it is a racial caste society built on the back of slaves. We wrote the lies into our founding documents, and fighting those lies gets you called a liar. Every war is fought on lies, necessary ones. And to me, we are in a war for our dignity, our safety and our futures, and our enemy is capital. It’s more important to win the war than to lose in terms you can live with.

None of this is to say you have to lie, though! You can just be mean and insinuating, which keeps you out of court anyway. I mean is there anybody in this discussion who actually believes environmental regulations as they exist in the US are enough? That we have hit the pinnacle of where we need to be to guarantee safe and sustainable mass transit? And does anybody disagree with the idea that a central, fundamental impediment to reaching that ideal state of true regulatory oversight, as it should be, is the hunger for money? Greed?

I can’t get too worked up about how we get to a better place when the way we got to where we are is a cascade of lies, failures and deliberate coverups on behalf of corporate interests.

If you are not willing to be as ruthless as the enemy, what are you going to do to beat them? Exxon knew, internally, allllll about climate change for about 40 years before they finally admitted they’d just been lying constantly. And what came of it? Nothing. So I think folks may be overstating the risk of political lies, no matter how much they (and even I) disagree with the tactic.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Climate change analogy is extremely relevant these kind of events are going to keep happening and they are statistically worse due to the interference of capital lobbying.

Just like we can't say exactly how much less-bad any particularly weather would be, but we know we're causing massive long-term damage with our CO2 emissions, our regulations have a lot of room for improvement which has been held back and made this.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

selec posted:

Like I said, I prefer the truth, but our society is packed to the gills with lies already. They’re built into the very fundament of the racial caste society we live in, which denies it is a racial caste society built on the back of slaves. We wrote the lies into our founding documents, and fighting those lies gets you called a liar. Every war is fought on lies, necessary ones. And to me, we are in a war for our dignity, our safety and our futures, and our enemy is capital. It’s more important to win the war than to lose in terms you can live with.

None of this is to say you have to lie, though! You can just be mean and insinuating, which keeps you out of court anyway. I mean is there anybody in this discussion who actually believes environmental regulations as they exist in the US are enough? That we have hit the pinnacle of where we need to be to guarantee safe and sustainable mass transit? And does anybody disagree with the idea that a central, fundamental impediment to reaching that ideal state of true regulatory oversight, as it should be, is the hunger for money? Greed?

I can’t get too worked up about how we get to a better place when the way we got to where we are is a cascade of lies, failures and deliberate coverups on behalf of corporate interests.

If you are not willing to be as ruthless as the enemy, what are you going to do to beat them? Exxon knew, internally, allllll about climate change for about 40 years before they finally admitted they’d just been lying constantly. And what came of it? Nothing. So I think folks may be overstating the risk of political lies, no matter how much they (and even I) disagree with the tactic.

I don't care. We're not terrorizing our own citizens with false information and insinuations because our elected leaders are too incompetent to legislate without doing so. This isn't a game.

selec
Sep 6, 2003

Harold Fjord posted:

Climate change analogy is extremely relevant these kind of events are going to keep happening and they are statistically worse due to the interference of capital lobbying.

Just like we can't say exactly how much less-bad any particularly weather would be, but we know we're causing massive long-term damage with our CO2 emissions, our regulations have a lot of room for improvement which has been held back and made this.

Exactly! Like when do we expect the fight for the climate to happen? How critical is that fight if a towering black smoke pillar doesn’t get you itching and angry? Why is the response to retire into statistics and MDS sheets rather than publicly daring naysayers to move into the town right now, because I bet they can get some sweetheart deals on houses from people less committed to the cause of moderate, sober observation than they are.

Papercut
Aug 24, 2005

Harold Fjord posted:

Do we have anything that says the EPA is doing this testing themselves directly as opposed to compiling information reported by the railroads contracto because I've seen a lot of references to the railroad having a contractor do the testing and I have significant doubts about the reliability of that contractor

Do you have a strong reason to believe the testing contractor would take on the liability of possible public health or other damages associated with contaminant levels due to this disaster? I'd be interested to see it.

selec
Sep 6, 2003

CuddleCryptid posted:

I don't care. We're not terrorizing our own citizens with false information and insinuations because our elected leaders are too incompetent to legislate without doing so. This isn't a game.

I agree the stakes are incredibly high, and will only get higher and the price in destruction and death so much higher, and yet the people in power who are ostensibly committed to a better environment for our planet and descendants seem real blasé about seizing an opportunity! Are we gonna go through this every time there’s a big species die-off, parsing MDS sheets to show the now-extinct beavers didn’t have quite critical levels of whatever toxin was worming through our ecosystem?

The retreat to scientism when action is called for is a real failing in my opinion, one I understand on a psychological level but not on a tactical level.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
I mean all of recorded history. It's not like no one has ever been mass poisoned and we only found out because of cancer records later. Didn't invent the idea of that happening

Who is going to hold them liable and how?

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

selec posted:

Exactly! Like when do we expect the fight for the climate to happen? How critical is that fight if a towering black smoke pillar doesn’t get you itching and angry?

I'm pretty sure climate change and this train derailment aren't related events, except maybe the diesel burned for the train to begin with.

selec
Sep 6, 2003

RBA Starblade posted:

I'm pretty sure climate change and this train derailment aren't related events, except maybe the diesel burned for the train to begin with.

They are related, because it’s all symptoms of humans placing higher premiums on convenience and profit over safety and future sustainability. This is a climate disaster, how could it not be related to the ongoing degradation of our climate due to the exact same pressures?

This is like a tiny model of the whole thing, a synecdoche of the larger problem being visited on a small town in a very compressed time and geographic scale. Human desire for profits and cost-cutting and a disregard for the natural and human environment that takes place around that activity.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
It might be helpful to just be frank about who's doing what. Which media outlets are spreading conspiracy theories about the disaster? Which prominent figures?

I don't see the point in having a debate about how "some people" or "the media" are spreading unspecified conspiracy theories and whether or not it's actually a good thing to do that.

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

celadon posted:

The responsible party is a faceless multi billion dollar corporation which just offered $5000/person to the town, which is a laughably small pittance that should evoke outrage.

Just a small correction here: they only offered $5 per person.

:shepface:

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

selec posted:

I agree the stakes are incredibly high, and will only get higher and the price in destruction and death so much higher, and yet the people in power who are ostensibly committed to a better environment for our planet and descendants seem real blasé about seizing an opportunity! Are we gonna go through this every time there’s a big species die-off, parsing MDS sheets to show the now-extinct beavers didn’t have quite critical levels of whatever toxin was worming through our ecosystem?

The retreat to scientism when action is called for is a real failing in my opinion, one I understand on a psychological level but not on a tactical level.

This isn't "scientism", this is telling a parent that their five year old isn't going to die in agony next week.

I mean, seriously, what the gently caress are you thinking? That the people in the affected area should just be held in perpetual horror so that the government can pull their heads out of their asses and do poo poo they could already be doing? Have some human empathy, for gods sake.

James Garfield
May 5, 2012
Am I a manipulative abuser in real life, or do I just roleplay one on the Internet for fun? You decide!

selec posted:

How critical is that fight if a towering black smoke pillar doesn’t get you itching and angry? Why is the response to retire into statistics and MDS sheets

You need to do technical stuff to fix any of these problems, getting mad about it on twitter might make you feel good (and there's nothing wrong with doing it if so) but it's entirely orthogonal to anything that will make this less likely in the future.

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cat botherer
Jan 6, 2022
Probation
Can't post for 22 minutes!

RBA Starblade posted:

I'm pretty sure climate change and this train derailment aren't related events, except maybe the diesel burned for the train to begin with.
The influence of capital caused the poor safety and environmental regulations that lead to this preventable disaster. Those are the same forces causing our absolute inaction in the face of climate change. This kind of liberal insistence that everything is its own little unrelated issue is just a set of blinders to avoid seeing how we are racing towards a cliff.

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