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Comment by monkburger | Hacker News Reader

This is what happens when the EPA's rules state chemical companies, can more or less, police themselves.

We've detected PFOAs in rainwater/clouds, in the artic, etc (See https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765)

They are going to lead to further health problems down the road.

I think the exon-mobile report on global warming is one of the most accurate models for predicting global warming, and that was written before this was a big political issue. I think having companies produce the research to hang themself with in the future is unstable though.

That one always makes me sad – imagine how different our world would have been if, say, they’d gone to Carter and offered to go public with the data in exchange for help decarbonizing. He’d have gotten his French-style civilian nuclear power program, they’d probably have been able to successfully shift into emerging green industries with their enormous resources, and we wouldn’t have an expensively cultivated anti-science political movement causing problems in other areas.

I spent half a decade working with climate data from institutions around the world. There are dragons in those datasets and it is really frustrating to watch denialism at large and have to deal with it personally.

I wish more people were aware of how damaging bad science is, even when it is well intentioned. Environmental studies are often littered with double counting and creative data framing. One faked study does more to convince people global warming is over blown than 100 rigorous studies showing that it isn't.

The reason people think climate change is overblown is because it challenges them to think about changing their way of life ie directly goes against their interests, not because some dataset has been poorly interpreted in a study they haven't read.

(Also because fossil fuel people kept financing fake science for decades and are actively participating in culture wars around it)

> The reason people think climate change is overblown is because it challenges them to think about changing their way of life ie directly goes against their interests…

I don’t think the vast, vast majority of people actually care that much. It’s a vocal minority on all sides. Most people just want to pay their bills, have food/clothing/shelter covered, and try to muddle through this life thing.

I would posit that the vast, vast majority of people have little say or impact as it pertains to climate change, they just don’t have the means or mental bandwidth to effect change.

Anecdata: I tell a relative that climate is going to get hotter and more variable and that said relative should be concerned that an unaffordable electricity bill may be in the cards (Houston anyone?). Relative's response: the governing authorities won't let that happen. Me: <internally sighing and filled with despair>

It was sitting around in the Texas blackout in February 2021 that really got me to think about the scale of the disaster on our hands. I realized that there was nothing the government could do other than wait for the state to thaw, and it was pretty unnerving to think about. I also remember how incredibly ironic I thought it would be if global warming meant I died of hypothermia in South Texas (a fate that a few sadly did succumb to; I really was a bit scared since I've never actually had to live at such low temperatures and never without heating). I'm generally much more worried about heatstroke.

I've lived here all my life, but I do wonder at what point I'll need to move. I actually had lunch with a couple old colleagues this week and interestingly, we're all lifelong Texans and talked about leaving the state. Currently it's more about politics, but we also talked about future climate as a concern. Once my parents and aunts/uncles are gone, I don't know that there will be much to hold me in place.

They will certainly care when you tell them they should stop driving their two tons trucks around in a city that's as friendly to pedestrian life as Afghanistan is to women.

Some environmental advocates' rhetoric focused on the lower probability but much higher damage outcomes, e.g. Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Language like "up to 20 feet" etc to focus on the higher range.

A doctor could say an infection has a chance of death if left untreated. If the person lives they'd say the doctor was "wrong", and "the doctor gave me a month to live."

At this point most probable estimates are so bad it's besides the point, but I'd think the lower odds yet especially cataclysmic projections are worth attention.

Ok let's go down the metaphor then : If the doctor tells you have one month to live because of lung cancer and it turns out you had actually two years ahead of you, I'd agree it's not the same but it seems that the information about the possibility for the end of it all for you should be the center of your attention and not whether you could have kept smoking another year, darn it.

The anti-science political movement was in effect long before Carter. He tried to switch to the metric system and was opposed on cultural grounds as one example. But look back to Darwin and Galileo and you’ll see a long standing pattern. Sadly, at this point it looks like it will doom us.

> Galileo

To be fair one of the reasons his ideas were rejected is because he wrote a book portraying the pope as an idiot. Heliocentrism/his books were banned earlier but a few years later one of his friends and supporters during the initial trial was elected pope. So there was a non insignificant chance that the Catholic church would have accepted heliocentrism a few hundred years sooner had he managed to be a bit more subtle and no alienate him.

Also I'm not trying to downplay the anti scientific attitude which was quite prevalent back in those days (when science couldn't be balanced with religious truths etc. otherwise I don't think it was that bad) but one of the main issues with his theory is that he couldn't really prove it conclusively (e.g. the issue with stellar parallax).

e.g. While the Roman inquisition did ban his theory and books but first they organized a public debate between Galileo and one of their lawyers which which was primarily based on scientific rather than religous arguments

I’m not saying it wasn’t there – Scopes, for example – but pumping many billions of dollars into it really amped it up, especially when it turned opposition to science into a Republican primary filter. While the southern realignment was unfolding, science denial was visible in both parties (e.g. William Proxmire, D-WI) but that was not as pronounced in the age of the space race and the science-dependent Cold War. That changed between the tobacco and fossil fuel companies’ enormous lobbying efforts, and you’ll recognize many of the same “experts” trotted out to explain why environmentalism, public health, or anything else which affects those companies’ bottom lines.

Well said; I was thinking of Scopes when I said Darwin. It’s hard to really get a feel for history that I didn’t live through and I’m talking about things a bit before my time which began in the Reagan era. I mostly look at the work of Carl Sagan and I get the feeling he really got going in the 70’s and 80’s. Agreed that it seems like tobacco companies wrote the original playbook for weaponizing disinformation for commercial purposes, but it’s fair to say that America’s issues with science denial preceded that as well.

I think the fight over the metric system is instructive - Im not aware of any huge lobbying effort to defeat it, but it became a culture war anyway, and now we have a strange mixed system in the US.

This kind of self regulation can probably work and be cost effective if you ruthlessly destroy any company found in violation rather than some fine and an apology.

Reminds me of criminal punishment in medieval times. Incarceration was a complete economic non-start so the penalties were brutal as a deterrent.

Corporate capital punishment, the company gets seized it's patents and copyrights made public domain, and any other assets it has sold to the highest bidder and those profits used to compensate the victims.

Unless you scale fines with income/wealth, fines are just a way of letting the rich do what they please. On the off chance they're caught - and don't get let off the hook because of how 'respectable' they are - it's so little money to them, it's not a discouragement at all.

A fine for dangerous driving that is crushing to a day laborer is unnoticeable to someone wealthy. And whereas that laborer, to challenge a ticket, would need to take time off from work costing them further - the wealthy person may have a standing relationship with a law firm, and that law firm might send a clerk or paralegal to challenge the ticket in court...and do so gratis.

That’s why Finland has “day fines” - after a threshold, fines are x days of your last years income. 5 or 6 figure fines are not uncommon.

I wonder if that makes the weight of the consequence less abstract? “I sped and now I’m working for free for a day.”

The problem of punishing corporations, is that the people that benefited from misconduct are possibly gone from the company already, and you might be punishing current employees who might even be unaware.

The people responsible for the misconduct at the time need to face criminal prosecution, and their personal wealth has to be first on the line for damage reparations.

It’s not about punishment. That’s the core of my comment. Make it so horrible for the shareholders and owners.

Can do both. Destroy the company, but also go after those responsible. Anyone who knew about the situation but didn't make their supervisor(s) aware is personally liable for damages. Anyone on the board or C-Suite that was aware and either did nothing or didn't notify regulators is also personally liable. In both cases if anyone died as a result the companies actions they should be tried for manslaughter.

If I understand correctly, those chemicals don't go away unless destroyed with highly sophisticated and expensive methods. They will continue to accumulate in concentration and cause more impact over time.

They do go away, but it depends on numerous factors. In humans, if you have polymorphisms in various genes relating to GSH detoxification, the half life could increase. (in theory)

half-lives of long-chain PFAS were longer than those of short-chain compounds, reaching almost 3 years in some cases. Some studies estimated the average half-lives for PFHxS at 2.86 years and L-PFOS (a specific form of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, C8) at 2.91 years. In comparison, the short-chain PFPeS had an estimated average half-life of 0.63 years, and perfluoroheptane sulfonic acid (PFHpS, C7) concentrations were 1.46 years. The shortest estimated half-lives were for perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA, C4) at 0.12 years and perfluoroheptanoic acid (PFHpA, C7) at 0.17 years.

Does this mean that if we stopped producing any new forever chemicals today, it would take more or less three years for organisms to expel them from their systems? Are they destroyed or simply taken out of the organisms and ready to be reabsorbed by the same or another organism for ever?

Environmental half lives are a different animal. I vaguely recall some obs studies that estimate a half life of PFOA to be 90 (water), 114 days for PFOS, their half-life in water is greater than 90 years for PFOA and greater than 41 years for PFOS, according to a 2014 publication from the EPA.

There's also a study from Europe showing vastly different half-lives based on soil temperature (colder temps -> longer half life), but I cannot locate the paper at the moment.

US EPA. (2014). Emerging Contaminants Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS) and Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA), https://www.wqa.org/Portals/0/Government%20Relations/factshe... arch2014.pdf

This is a huge problem across the board; industry and congress have been steadily stripping federal agencies of staff/budget, authority, etc.

Congress long figured out how to kill off regulation that is publicly popular: strangle the agency budget-wise, not appoint new department leaders, etc. Adding ever-increasing paperwork is also popular.

OSHA has the lowest number of inspectors in ~45 years. The agency is about 50 years old. https://www.nelp.org/news-releases/number-federal-workplace-...

It has one inspector for every 77,000 workers and its budget amounts to $4/worker: https://www.afge.org/article/aflcio-osha-budget-amounts-to-3...

The EPA's inspections have fallen to half the number of ten years ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/02/0...

The number of ATF inspections has been falling for decades and the ATF apparently is allowing gun shops even with multiple violations to go unpunished https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2021/0...

The poultry industry pushed and got greater self-regulation around 2013 to increase line speeds: https://awionline.org/awi-quarterly/2013-fall/usda-refuses-d...

The Trump administration passed widespread overhauls of the meat packing industry letting them self-regulate to increase production https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/03/federal-pork-insp...

In ten years the number of food inspections the FDA conducts have fallen to one fifth the rate in 2010: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/05/fda-food-safe...

Foreign drug manufacturing site inspections plummeted with the pandemic and have yet to recover, too.

The IRS budget has been slashed, mostly for auditing - despite audits of the 0.1% wealthiest resulting in an average of $90,000 per audit recovered: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/irs...

The de minimis for shipments into the US was raised from $200 to $800 in 2016 which has allowed for a massive increase in goods to be imported that are not subject to any inspection or taxes https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/de-minim...

We need regulation of the regulations! /s

I get the joke, but what we need is a constitutional amendment overriding Citizens United, reigning in the absurdity of "corporations have free speech rights and thus they can spend whatever they want on political campaigns and PACs, and without even reporting it."

I agree wholeheartedly.

What if one or both political parties spoke out about campaign finance corruption? What if they refuses corporate donations, and made direct appeals to their voters to chip in (YouTuber style). I'm trying very hard to not be partisan here, but why doesn't either party take a stand? Don't they share responsibility for accepting the money?

Why would they take a stand against their own interests?

because their interests are, ostensibly, with their constituents.

sounds like idealism more than a material analysis

You must be new to politics, lol. I am not sure if modern politicians even pretend to represent their constituents these days. Special interests first, party second, constituents only during an election, but only if you have a close race.

thats a defeatist attitude. "Oh the windows are already broken, let's spray paint the walls."

"wait and vote and wait" is the defeatist attitude. "oh my window is smashed, let's put a new one up. oh my window is smashed, let's put a new one up. nothing else to be done about it." you got played by respecting ideals over materialism.

No reason the ATF needs to exist though, the taxes and stuff like explosives enforcement should be separate.

OSHA may have the lowest # of inspectors in ~45 years, but the rate of worker deaths is also at just about its lowest over that same time period - so not sure the # of inspectors is really relevant.

More is not always better.

Worker deaths in America are down—on average, from about 38 worker deaths a day in 1970 to 13 a day in 2020.

Worker injuries and illnesses are down—from 10.9 incidents per 100 workers in 1972 to 2.7 per 100 in 2020.

Source: https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats

I mean, we lost all our manufacturing in that time period. We have far more service jobs (e.g. not inherently dangerous) in the economy now compared to 1970.

I agree - which is why less inspectors seem reasonable to m, there are a smaller number of dangerous jobs, less inspectors needed, AND imo, most importantly, the ever-present threat of a very expensive jury award keeps some companies on the straight-and-narrow.

This can lead to bio-death of the planet.

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