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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI America's Hot Garbage Problem
Animats wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
Shoreline, where Google HQ is, was a garbage dump. All those low hills
are garbage. At one time they had a methane collection system driving a
small power plant, but there's no longer enough methane for that. Once
there was a methane fire at a concert.
Palo Alto and Menlo Park had similar garbage dumps, and their hilly
parks along the shore of the bay are also trash.
MathMonkeyMan wrote 6 hours 7 min ago:
It's interesting that by overdrawing methane (for energy), you
introduce oxygen, which makes the compost pile too hot. I wouldn't have
thought of that.
Lets build an aerobically bio-heated power station!
oefrha wrote 6 hours 7 min ago:
Pretty weird this long article never mentioned waste-to-energy (other
than sucking methane out of landfills, which according to the article
is making uncontrolled garbage fires more common). Garbage should burn,
in modern incineration plants with strict emission standards. Landfills
are unsustainable and should be considered a thing of the past.
3eb7988a1663 wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
Landfills are unsustainable...
The largest landfill in the USA is the Apex Landfill, at about 3
square miles (7.7 km2) with an estimated capacity of ~1000 million
tons. The entire country landfills some 150 million tons per year.
That is, a single landfill in Nevada could take all of the country's
trash for six years.
We could build landfills indefinitely. It is a logistics and
political issue.
freetime2 wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
Incineration produces ash that ends up in landfills. The volume is of
course a lot smaller, but I think there will always be a need for
landfills. In fact, my city just opened up a new landfill
specifically for incineration by-products a couple years ago. And as
people are producing more and more trash every year, demand for such
facilities will likely continue to increase.
comex wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
At least the ash wonât participate in uncontrolled burning.
toomuchtodo wrote 6 hours 3 min ago:
[1] [2]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
URI [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994374
URI [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984
HotGarbage wrote 6 hours 24 min ago:
I'm everyone's problem
aspenmayer wrote 3 hours 56 min ago:
Maybe if you were hotter youâd blow up as the kids say and be more
popular.
Havoc wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
Sounds like a toothless regulator problem to me
freetime2 wrote 6 hours 47 min ago:
URI [1]: https://archive.is/qmqsm
burnt-resistor wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
These are "sacrifice zones". See also: every superfund site, Hinkley
CA, many spots in WV, Four Corners, most of Houston, Cancer Alley
between NOLA and BRLA, and golf courses built on top of toxic fly ash.
scns wrote 6 hours 5 min ago:
> golf courses built on top of toxic fly ash
Better than houses and playgrounds, am i wrong?
atleastoptimal wrote 6 hours 33 min ago:
This, and Flint MI, is why I have very little trust in many public
institutions. At least in the US, there is a recurrent failure to
abandon profitable aims even to save human lives. It is very much a
reality of every person for themselves that does not square with the
material wealth of the US.
bluGill wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
The us is a large place with a lot of media so there is a lot of
problems - but in proportion things are good, exposeure makes it
seem bad but it is not.
if you don't hear about problems the correct assumption is that
things are bad and the coverup is working. Assuming things are
better elsewhere is bad. Unless you personally check it of course,
which you cannot do and live a life
kube-system wrote 5 hours 53 min ago:
> very little trust in many public institutions.
As opposed to...... the private institutions that created most of
those problems?
usui wrote 5 hours 41 min ago:
This is a strawman. The OP didn't mention trusting private
institutions over public institutions, just that you can't ever
trust American public institutions to do the right thing for you
before being dragged kicking and screaming. What the poster says
is true. Living in the US is coming to terms with "every person
for themselves" is reality, and that it "does not square with the
material wealth of the US". You can trust public institutions to
some extent more than private, but interacting with them is still
all about fending for yourself. Being familiar with the American
government and living in another country that treats its citizens
much better (at least for daily operations and processes) opens
your eyes to how bad it is. It's a horror how much money the US
has while failing to invest the majority of profits back into
raising standards for everyone. Dozens of countries do better
with much less.
kube-system wrote 5 hours 21 min ago:
Well who else is there to solve the problem?
> It's a horror how much money the US has while failing to
invest the majority of profits back into raising standards for
everyone.
That's because of private institutions too. Regulatory capture
is the reason we can't govern worth a shit in the US. The only
remotely feasible way to solve environmental tragedy of the
commons issues is through regulation.
dwattttt wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
> That's because of private institutions too. Regulatory
capture is the reason we can't govern worth a shit in the US
I think the ingrained "every person for themselves" attitude
is more fundamentally a problem. Fix one expression of it and
10 more will turn up.
kube-system wrote 31 min ago:
That's the long term result of constant propaganda by the
same folks who are also working towards regulatory capture.
The same groups who put up billboards and political ads
begging the American people to bend over backwards for big
business, because clearly any accountability is a
restriction on freedomâ¢. Somehow they've managed to
literally convince people that, if you can't dump the acid
mine drainage and waste frack water in a local river,
everyone is going to lose their job and the power grid will
go dark. If you convince enough people to believe this
shit, you win regulatory capture.
AnthonyMouse wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
To get there you have to be using a definition of "private
institutions" which is coterminous with all of humanity.
Regulatory capture regularly happens by government employees
(i.e. public sector unions who want makework jobs), ordinary
homeowners who want high housing costs at the expense of new
buyers because they've already bought in, the AARP lobbying
for massively expensive medicare expansions and other
healthcare rules that disproportionately benefit affluent
retirees etc.
The incentive of those groups to lobby for their own personal
gain is inherent in their existence. If government employees
or private homeowners or retirees exist then they'll want
what benefits them over what benefits the general public. So
the problem of regulatory capture is a problem of how to
constrain the government from making rules at the behest of
special interest groups.
kube-system wrote 37 min ago:
I'm talking about business and industry. Neither
government employees, their unions, nor the AARP are the
forces lobbying to allow pollution of public resources --
the ones who are doing so are the polluters who directly
benefit from it.
AnthonyMouse wrote 21 min ago:
Governments are some of the largest polluters in the
world. Any given special interest is lobbying for the
thing they want at the expense of the general public. Is
there something that makes pollution different than e.g.
professional licensing capture that increases the cost of
trade services and therefore causes people to be priced
out of making safety-related repairs? Or to put it the
other way, any reason the likes of public transit systems
should be able to operate whatsoever when they produce
non-zero amounts of brake dust and CO2 instead of making
everybody walk everywhere?
meepmorp wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
publicly traded institutions, maybe?
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