While a recent devastating train derailment in Ohio does not appear to be ecoterrorism, it does remind us how easily an environmental disaster can happen, and have happened in the past due to accidents or ecoterrorism.
Oil, natural gas, and various petrochemical products are transported by rail, trucks, and pipelines, but although pipelines have the lowest accident rate of them, environmentalists fight their construction. We’ll discuss the failures of the current administration to address the Ohio train derailment, ecoterrorism, and ask why safer means are so often dismissed by supposed environmentalists.
On this week’s episode of Climate change Roundtable, Host Anthony Watts is joined by H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken to dive into the folly of wind energy. Tune in to Climate Change Roundtable live every Friday at 1PM EST 12pm CST.
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In case you don’t know much about the American railroad infrastructure, the railroads cannot refuse shipment of hazardous materials. And since American cities grew around rail lines and rail intersects, these lines run through the heart of most cities (think Baltimore train tunnel). It’s good that overreach has moved mostly past ethanol and ethanol unit trains in this transport case. Bring forth the battery fire news coverage.
story tip
Ford F-150 Lightning production halt triggered by battery fire (cnbc.com)
I’m sorry, but if there’s no cellphone videos of the fire, as far as MSM is concerned, it didn’t happen. Nice try!
There are exceptions…
Tangent: I was so disappointed by the PBS anti-nuke documentary “Glow Trains”.
Chemical traffic is a large and lucrative part of US rail freight “carload” traffic. Trains are not given any “special” designation unless they carry a sizable portion of “hazmat” cars relative to other types of freight, or unless they are “unit trains” handling a trainload of a single cargo (e.g. Bakken crude, ethanol, sulphuric acid).
So the Ohio governor wailing about how the State wasn’t “notified” of hazmat cars traveling through Ohio is comical. There are probably a dozen trains each day rolling through Ohio on both Norfolk Southern AND CSX carrying hazardous materials of various types, along with unit trains of Bakken crude and ethanol. I’m sure plenty goes right through Cleveland much less small towns like the one where the recent NS derailment occurred. The governor is either being disingenuous or is quite naive about freight trains.
The real problem today is hedge fund “activist” investors pushing railroads into adopting draconian cost-cutting to achieve short-term profits at the expense of service and safety under the monikor “Precision Scheduled Railroading.” That NS train had 150 cars, 1.5-2x as long as a “typical” freight train of a decade ago.
Lumbering, underpowered 150 car trains probably don’t heat up the freight car wheel bearings enough to be caught by defective equipment detectors until it’s too late – the recent Ohio derailment was caused by an axle end burning through due to a bad wheel bearing.
Many years ago, an uninteresting derailment of a super reinforced CASTOR (nuclear material) type wagon occurred at very low speed in a small town. The center right mayor was angry that he wasn’t informed that CASTORs (the safest wagons in existence) travelled in his unimportant town!
On the first day after the derailment, news reports spoke of “sparks coming from under one of the cars” before the derail. My limited understanding of rail transport immediately thought ‘Hot Box’, the colloquial description of a wheel bearing failure in a railcar. I wondered why ‘Hot Box’ detectors wouldn’t have found it.
Yet, to this day, the Brandon administration is still blaming President Trump for the incident because of his policy that delayed electronic braking requirements in trains.
Ah, another overpaid wunderchild CEO believes they can cut hours, demand greater people efficiency, demand new inventions and improvements from inventors, scientists and engineers while cutting costs and reducing employees.
Not to overlook the CEO blaming “execution issues” for their immediate troubles.
And remember to follow the PR consultant advice to spread out the bad news.
Ford F-150 Lightning had separate battery issue before fire (cnbc.com)
It really is no big deal, relatively speaking.
Vinyl chloride is a gas at STP. Boiling point −13.4 °C (7.9 °F; 259.8 K)
It has gone. The damage is from local fire and explosion products.
It doesn’t even sink downwards in water.
Not nice, locally, of course. But this is no Chernobyl.
Contrast the small town with people’s animals dropping dead while the EPA detects “no danger” with the EPA’s “endangerment finding” for CO2. PLANT FOOD.
Clearly the EPA needs to either get back “on mission” or be disbanded.
According to the “adults in the room” and the legitimate “not fake news” sources:
far right and conspiracy theorists is when not wanting to breath phosgene
It’s a strange hill to die on…