[NEWS] Republican bill will reduce free school lunch

[Cappytaino]

my post was unrelated to the school lunch aspect, it was a response to red spy. safety environment regulations.

The problem with environmental regulations is that they're usually proposed by politicians that have no background in environmental science, so many of them are in effect useless.

A great example is the Clean Water Act, which was proposed by Edmund Muskie, a Maine politician with no apparent education in environmental science beyond that of the average citizen.

The clean water act is intended to protect sources of fresh water and wetland habitats, but defines protected waters as "[waters] with significant nexus to navigable waters," which is such a general definition which leaves so much to the interpretation of the legal system.

For instance, there is a marshy sand patch in the back of my house that extends about 300 yards to a small tributary of a local river. Nothing lives in this patch of sand, and it's effectively just a giant "sponge" that absorbs water from when the river floods or if rain falls onto it and it's able to hold this water for a long time because it is in the shade of some trees growing on the sides of it.

We wanted to drain and fill part of this sand with dirt and cement to build a shed on it. No can do, because when we applied for a permit we were told that the area was too close to the river and anything we do there could run off into the river. That would be great if this sand patch even sloped the right way, because it mostly slopes towards my house and ends in a small "bluff" at the edge of the river. The water table also is not particularly high, it's 35 feet below this stuffty sand patch, so the chances of leaching into groundwater supply are slim to none.

Essentially, this regulation leaves us stuck with 1/3 of our land being effectively useless because the law won't let us do anything with it and nobody will buy it for exactly that reason.

Obviously this is a super anecdotal example but environmental regulations turn into a clown fiesta that hurt more than they help if too much is left to the discretion of judicial authority.

Before you accuse me of only being against these things because they are inconvenient to me, I'm an environmental earth sciences major with a specialization in sustainable energy and fluvial geomorphology, so this situation while personal does fall into my area of expertise and future career.

[Ad Bot]

[Tactical Nuke]

politicians in general are stupid and should not be making decisions that they don't exercise advanced knowledge in

hence conservatism

[Lego lad]

i should make all the desicions

[Cappytaino]

politicians in general are stupid and should not be making decisions that they don't exercise advanced knowledge in

hence conservatism

Particularly around the subject of the environment the ideological "high horse" that progressives think they have is so God damn evident and only more so as I learn more about environmental science and in particular how human activity affects the environment.

Progressives love to confuse acknowledging something with being educated about it. It's like they believe that if you acknowledge that human activity does negatively affect the environment, you are suddenly an expert and can say whatever bullstuff you like about the environment because you are on the "proper" side of the argument.

Al Gore and the movie An Inconvenient Truth are a great example. He made this ludicrous projection that the ice caps would melt by ~2020 which had zero foundation and just got people in a frenzy over nothing.

Whenever politicians, particularly those on the left, talk about anything having to do with the environment, I just assume they're grandstanding until proven otherwise because some of the things they say are just so asinine it makes my head spin.

Yea the environment is fragile but I hate to burst everyone's bubbles, driving a hybrid and recycling your water bottles doesn't mean stuff unless China stops burning lignite.

[PhantOS]

we can't force china to limit their impact on the environment, but that doesn't mean we should wait on them to do something before we start making changes. we produce half as much pollution as china, but that's still a great amount, and we should at least start somewhere. i'm not educated in environmental sciences like you are, but i'm sure there's something that can be done to limit our impact on various ecosystems

[Cappytaino]

we can't force china to limit their impact on the environment, but that doesn't mean we should wait on them to do something before we start making changes. we produce half as much pollution as china, but that's still a great amount, and we should at least start somewhere. i'm not educated in environmental sciences like you are, but i'm sure there's something that can be done to limit our impact on various ecosystems

Transitioning to nuclear power is the best thing we can do in the interim to reduce our carbon footprint but every time a nuclear plant is proposed, Greenpeace and similar folks come out and screech about Chernobyl and Fukushima-Daiichi and how "OMG the plant could melt down REEEEE" but nuclear energy, while technically not "sustainable" is VERY clean, with the only notable emission being the steam used to power the turbines.

Nuclear disasters happen because of mismanagement and incompetence. The Chernobyl plant meltdown was because the Soviets were running it and were conducting tests of the failsafe mechanisms, and in typical communist fashion the failsafe failed spectacularly and caused a meltdown. The Fukushima-Daiichi plant should NEVER have been built in the first place. Nuclear power plants never should be built in areas prone to natural disasters, and the Fukushima-Daiichi plant is on the intersection of the Eurasian, Pacific, and Philippine plates, making the area highly active in terms of tectonic activity and volcanism. The plant melted down after being damaged by an earthquake and the following tsunami and shocker, the failsafe didn't work again.

When run competently in areas not prone to these kinds of disasters, these plants have next to no chance of melting down in their life cycle. Advances in fuel types (Thorium isotopes in particular) allow for fuel rods which are much more difficult to induce into a state of meltdown.

Increased use of nuclear energy would greatly cut carbon emissions but would require politicians and activist groups to stop collectively stuffting themselves over the idea of new plants. This decision should be a no-brainer but some people are literal no-brainers and would rather oppose than support expansion of nuclear power generation in the US.

See France for a country that is able to effectively generate power via nuclear plants and to my recollection has never had a major incident at a plant.

[PhantOS]

what about windpower? i know germany has a whole array of wind-powered turbines and stuff

[Cappytaino]

what about windpower? i know germany has a whole array of wind-powered turbines and stuff

Wind power is really expensive in general as the turbines required cost a lot of money to install initially. They can't even be installed near homes since they're so noisy. Wind turbines are also inconsistent sources of power because the output of any given turbine is dependant on having consistent wind. Wind power can't be the sole provider of power for an area because in the case of less wind than usual, there has to be a backup in place to generate or store enough power.

Wind power is clean in its operation but the manufacture, construction, and maintenance of turbines all is expensive and creates emissions anyway. While the emissions generated aren't that great, wind power is overall too expensive and inconsistent to be used as a primary source of power.

Solar power is similar in that it's great when it works, but photovoltaic panels are expensive and on cloudy days or at night they will generate no power at all.

Wind farms also require a large amount of relatively open space, which is common in the US, but much of it is privately owned and the government will have a hard time arguing that using eminent domain to purchase land to put up a wind turbine is "for the public good" unless the turbine will be owned by the government and the people by proxy and this likely will cause disputes between land owners and the government that will waste tons of time and money.

Basically wind power is way more trouble than it is worth at this point. It may work for Germany but Germany has vastly different infrastructure and therefore power consumption than the US. New York, California, and Texas alone have about the same population as Germany. Take into account the difference in land area, overall lower population density, and loss of power when transferred over long distances and you'll see that the situations aren't really comparable

[TableSalt]

#Home-schooled
it's a joke don't punch me aaaaa

[Tactical Nuke]

what about windpower? i know germany has a whole array of wind-powered turbines and stuff

the birds, phantos
think of the birds

[King Tøny]

what about windpower? i know germany has a whole array of wind-powered turbines and stuff

Do you know how many loving birds die because of wind?

Some liberal made a speech saying humans are more important than birds, that's why we need wind.

They got laughed out of the room.

[PhantOS]

Do you know how many loving birds die because of wind?

this sentence is funny

[Cheze]

school lunches are stuff so who cares?

[PhantOS]

school lunches are stuff so who cares?

the kids who will have nothing to eat for lunch when they aren't allowed to get it for free

[SWAT One]

this sentence is funny

I hope that "power" is implied.


Would be nice if we could just jettison all spent nuclear waste into the sun.  All you need is a stable rocket to exceed escape velocity with bearings oriented toward the sun and nuclear fuel tanks on board.

I would honestly like to see a transition toward nuclear, as it is a clean source of power as long as it is handled correctly.  If Thorium isotope fuel turns out to be more cost-effective and safe, I'd be happy to see that transition as well.

Also, makes me laugh when politicians say "clean coal" as an alternative as if it implicitly means "clean energy".