Recent comments

  • Reply to: NPR's "The Salt" Blog Muddies the Issue of Sewage Sludge   9 years 6 months ago
    Speaking of muddying the issues...This article and other PRWatch and Center for Media and Democracy articles conflate sewage sludge with compost that contains sewage sludge. Land application of sewage sludge is one issue. But compost containing sewage sludge as an ingredient is another. While I have my reservations about eating food from sewage sludge compost, were you aware that there are lots of beneficial uses for sewage sludge compost? Does the author know that this compost can still have beneficial uses? Were you aware that food production is just a small fraction of the compost market? SSC can be applied to stretches of road where the soil has been disturbed to aid in revegetation which prevents erosion? Did you know that it can be used in compost socks that aid in storm water management? Or how about the application of sludge compost as alternative daily cover for landfills and as a medium for filtering and preventing erosion from landfill slopes? I assume not because of the unfair reporting. And really, applying "treated" sewage sludge to agricultural fields is awful. But that is not the same as composted sewage sludge. You obviously know nothing about what happens in an industrial composting facility if you equate the two. The reports you cite specifically look at treated sewage sludge, not composted sewage sludge. That is a rather important distinction to make if you're making a science-based claim. In all of the material I have found, I find a lot of conflating and flag-raising, but do tell us what should be done with sewage sludge? Should we revert back to the days of not treating and just letting it flow back into the river? Do we burn it and release the chemicals into the air? Or should we all just bury our waste and let it leach into the ground water? Or let me guess, we shouldn't even be producing waste...please, until we get there, what should we do? You could use this as an opportunity to offer an alternative method for dealing with sewage sludge, but perhaps sounding the alarm gets you more page views. Maybe you should tell people to stop flushing their toilets if they want to "be the change". It's always easier to tear things down than to build them up.
  • Reply to: Common Cause and CMD Seek Public Records on Scott Walker's Retreat with the Koch Brothers   9 years 6 months ago
    Koch and his socialsm regimes are destroying our democracy. He is doing just as all Facist dictators do. Remember the supreme court will appoint koch president and the houses will confirm in 2016. he will be allowed to be oresident for life. This what they decided in palm Beach behind closed doors.
  • Reply to: Prosecutor in Scott Walker Probe Asks Justices to Recuse   9 years 6 months ago
    Does anyone really think they'll recuse? C'mon.
  • Reply to: Plastic Bag Manufacturers Edit California Textbooks   9 years 6 months ago

    Good point! Sure, you can look at it that way if you like, and yet no matter how you slice it, it's wasteful. There are also many other things that this byproduct could have been used for, other than bags given for free to lazy people who don't bring their own. The discovery of my Thesis, was that the plassstic bag ought not be made a priority as the opportunity cost (ethically, environmentally, and economically) was simply too great when considering other options. And consider, that there is energy in plastic bags (try burning one, no actually don't, you'll piss your neighbors off), and there was probably even more energy in the byproduct that it was made from. You could have burned the new bags (or this by-product) and have come out further ahead if energy was your goal as opposed to stinky meat juice leakage. Whether it was the primary or tertiary use of the fossil fuels, Bottom Line (if you agree with the logic in my thesis, which apparently my advisors did): Plastic Bags are not Justifiable in cosidering the economic, ethical and environmental costs. But again, what are the goals? You failed to engage my comment in this capacity, rather, you merely criticized "how it was said" with a "chicken or the egg" type jab. I feel like I wasted 10 minutes of my life I will never get back because of it. : (
    Now someone will probably reply to tell me that bags get recycled, anyway, and therefore there is no issue, as if recycling uses no energy, and as if downgrading is of no consquence. It's pretty hopeless.

  • Reply to: Rumors of the Walker Probe's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated   9 years 6 months ago
    On Feb. 12 The Washington Post and The New York Times reported on the federal conviction of GOP operative Tyler Harber for illegal political coordination. The Washington Post article references the John Doe investigations of Scott Walker and friends: "Although Harber appears to be the first political operative to be criminally convicted of illegal coordination federally, there have been several significant coordination probes at the state level. The most high-profile case has been in Wisconsin, where prosecutors were scrutinizing possible illegal coordination between Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and outside groups. That case is still being challenged in state courts." If federal prosecutors continue to pursue illegal coordination cases, might a federal investigation into whether Scott Walker and friends violated laws against political coordination go on beyond the John Doe investigation now tied up in Wisconsin courts?

Pages