Climate Crimes Against Humanity? A Huge Threat of Explosion 'Unable to Stop'

20151123_163932 (1280x720).jpg As the actual storm named Harvey moves out of state the drama and apocalyptic horrors left in it's aftermath move on apace. Today it is being reported that a huge explosion of an Ammonia plant in Crosby, TX just off Interstate 10 between Houston and New Orleans may well be unstoppable. Will emit gasses toward flood drowned Houston and my relatives in between? Many of these problems are Climate Crimes that have been carried out over decades. The media has a role to play here. Will we be able to make them?

I finally talked to my relatives in Baytown, TX. They sounded relieved that although they had been inside their house unable to leave for days they had not lost power or take on water in their home even though they were surrounded by it like they were on an island.

I didn't mention the fact that the Exxon Mobile plant in town was literally SINKING into the flood soaked wetlands, and that it had emitted toxic gases and who knows what else. After all, they bought their house after they were first married and have raised a family there, all the while consciously living with the risks. Nothing I can say will make a difference at this point, and only drive us further apart than the left/right schism that already exists between us.

I watched the Democracy Now! segment featured by joe in tonight's Evening Blues and learned that the Crosby chemical plant which is usually only a 15 minute drive from my relative's home down I-10 was in trouble.

I went online to check it out. It does not look good. Like the South Texas Nuclear Project all the refineres are built in the coastal wetlands. What could possibly go wrong?

This puppy may well explode and no telling what gases and what not will float over to my relatives place and on to Houston to join the criminal cocktail of pollutants being released as I write this.

And this plant is French owned. Heh.

If you have read this far you will probably be quite interested to see what a local writer has to say about this unfolding drama which he says is :

Sure, reports continue to come out of other industrial facilities damaged by Harvey, as we've noted, but none of those situations have the same immediate potential to go as horribly wrong as the problem at the site owned by French industrial behemoth Arkema SA.

Crosby Ammonia Plant in Danger of Exploding As Harvey Fallout Continues [UPDATED]

Naomi Klein is saying that now is the time to pressure the media to talk about the climate change contributions to this catastrope.


Maybe start with CNBC?

They have this story listed under 'Natural Disasters.'

Back in the day I was very proud when my relatives were able to by their own home. After one lost good factory job after NAFTA sent it to Mexico I wondered if they would lose that home. Perhaps, if they would have moved away that would have been for the best. Who knows?

From where we sit looking at the situation there and around the world can't help wondering if this is the mystical apocalypse. /s

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divineorder's picture

Santa Fe, NM improving our ability to be prepared for emergencies while checking the news from time to time.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

Just as we saw this happen in New Orleans where many poor people's homes were demolished and people had to find a way to relocate, the same things will happen in Houston.
Poor people are always the ones who suffer the most from catastrophes.

The Legal Crises to Follow in Hurricane Harvey's Wake

Legal aid lawyers are already working with poor people to assist them with a process that can be as devastating as the event.

Disasters like Harvey can create legal crises for families that last long after the waters recede. Long-term evacuees from neighborhoods like those near the Addicks Reservoir’s spillways, which might be flooded for months, are at risk of having their homes auctioned off if they can’t move back in soon enough. People who flee can lose track of their mortgage payments and face foreclosure when they return. Evacuees from rental properties and apartments can face evictions, rising rents, and other challenges from unscrupulous landlords.

Maybe this time the poor people won't lose everything that haven't lost already.
The vultures are already lining up to profit from this national disaster.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

The Aspie Corner's picture

From corporate caused disasters to droughts to hurricanes to their shitty treatment of women and children, it's a surprise anyone would wanna live there.

But I guess I've no room to talk given that people don't refer to Florida as America's Wang for nothing.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

divineorder's picture

@The Aspie Corner @The Aspie Corner

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

riverlover's picture

@divineorder Puts a certain accent on the song.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

@divineorder

what will it take?

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joe shikspack's picture

here's an article that i'll probably run excerpts of tomorrow night that has some good information in it:

Houston’s polluted Superfund sites threaten to contaminate floodwaters

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

Huge floating rafts of fire ants are floating in the flood waters. They were flooded out of their underground nests and they interlock their legs and their queen and larvae are in the middle of the rafts.

IMG_1187.JPG

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divineorder's picture

@snoopydawg

Have been bitten by them when we retired from Austin down to East Bay. Always raised a sore with puss.

Invasives in North America, they kill lots of wildlife.

But after many millions spent on multiple continents they still soldier on.

Resilient ! They are a model for human survival, if we would only look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ant

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@snoopydawg is the long-term effect of climate change on insects, the most adaptable of life forms on earth. They could turn out to be just as bad a problem as starvation and thirst.

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lotlizard's picture

@gustogirl  
Where are the ecosystem models and simulations?

I can easily imagine population of some species getting out of hand once significant numbers of individuals start surviving the warmer winters.

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@snoopydawg
I was watching a video link from one of the Harvey stories and they said you can break up the floating fire ants by spraying them with a soap solution. It seems to affect the surface tension of the water and the ant's ability to trap air with its body that enable the floating rafts of ants. Of course, the video reminds to be safe about it so you don't have swarms of ants crawling onto you.

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Deja's picture

@blue drop
But yes, having them swarm and cling to the person doing it would be a nightmare!

There's a way to kill them without chemicals when they're not floating, but living in their mounds, too.

For whatever reason, on overcast days, they bring their larvae up closer to the surface. So, on those days, take a HUGE pot of boiling water and pour it first around the outside edge of the mound, and spiral your way to center, saturating the mound. The goal is for the boiling water to make it to the queen, taking out as many larvae and workers along the way as possible.

If done correctly and enough boiling water is used, they will be dead. If not, do it again, because it's not poison, just water.

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@divineorder for a propagandist, does it?

I had no trouble accessing site.

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@divineorder

But there is a way around that.

Copy the link of the Washington Post article.

Go to http://archive.is/

Paste the URL of the Washington Post article into the box that says "My url is alive and I want to archive its content."

Click "Save the page"

It saves it and gives a new URL.

You should be able to read it now

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Creosote.'s picture

@LoneStarMike
It completely figures that Bezos would want to find another money angle.
Interestingly, a recent report from a big Vanguard fund said "[O]ur lack of benchmark constituent Amazon.com . . . hurt performance. . . . Amazon is a strong business but does not fit our investment approach, as it lacks both yield and attractive valuation."

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@Creosote.

I know it works for The New York Times, but I'm not sure if it works on all the other paywall sites. Wall Street Journal is hit and miss.

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WoodsDweller's picture

...when do we start talking about abandoning the Gulf Coast? Right now there's nowhere for millions of people to relocate to.
It's time to start building Cities Of The Future. We've never done that, build a new city from scratch. The Chinese have been doing it, as I understand it a a failure of their economy to properly allocate resources. We never have.
You can't find a spot where there won't be torrential rains. Here in Colorado we had a major flood a few years back. But you can find spots with enough drainage.
Put the lowest part of the infrastructure 250 feet above current sea level. Harden the city against megastorms by putting it mostly underground. Keep the nearby area clear to prevent wildfire (soon that won't be a problem, nothing of note will live on the surface).
No private vehicles, no exceptions, and no need for them.
Power it entirely with renewables. Run fresh water lines in from the coast, from offshore wind-powered desalination plants. Multiple lines for redundancy.
Grow food in underground greenhouses. Import/export as little as possible. Connect cities with high speed electric rails powered by renewables.
No slums. No luxury apartments.
Start to dismantle the heavy industry by the coast. Eliminate the oil and gas infrastructure, we won't be using it any more. Move chemical plants to less vulnerable spots, connect them to workers with rail lines. Defuel the nuke plants and start the decommissioning process. I have no hope that it can be completed in time.
Where will the money come from? To start with, use the money that would otherwise have been wasted rebuilding doomed settlements. Then implement a wealth tax, together with a 100% inheritance tax (with a generous exclusion). It will take all the money there is, and that won't be enough, but we need to do what we can, and we need to do it now.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

enhydra lutris's picture

@WoodsDweller
mountantop removal overburden down there for making barrier islands and dikes. Then I remembered Pelosi's dictum, we're a capitalist country, that's just the way it is, so I guess it is all up to the banksters, oil barons and the Koch Bros.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

divineorder's picture

@WoodsDweller she would have a tough time living underground. But I know her and how adaptable she is.

Saw this movie on an overnight flight back from our annual camping trip to southern Africa. What the mind can conceive.....

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

many of them have or are in the process of building bug out shelters here in Kansas and in New Zealand.
These bunkers are being heavily guarded by mercenaries and when the poop hits the fan, they will get in their private jets to fly to their shelters.

I don't think that they have thought this through. What's to stop those mercenaries from shooting them and their families and take their bug out shelters for themselves and their families?

"Here's your final paycheck, now leave and good luck with finding a way to live through this disaster".

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

What's to stop those mercenaries from shooting them and their families and take their bug out shelters for themselves and their families?

I recently read a post about that phenomenon of wealthy people building shelters in NZ. I think the post had said that NZ was putting a stop to that (I think) and it was pointless because people will turn on the wealthy ones in the shelters if it gets that bad. I can't remember where I read it. It was either here or on Jack Pine Radicals.

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Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

I don't think that they have thought this through.

can't remember where, about how the Maoris in New Zealand have already scoped out all the billionaire bunkers and plan to take them over en masse once the SHTF.

Best part: they obtained copies of the compounds' blue prints and land surveys by simply asking at the local NZ registry offices.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

@Not Henry Kissinger

Lol, mmmmmm, fat and tasty long pig moving into range! What did they think the starving hordes there would eat? Unless their guards get to them first, being the ones with weapons - not to mention friends and family left to die miserably in the world ruined by that lot...

Silly buggers, creating a 'dog eat dog' situation on the theory that their then-useless wealth drained from everyone else would protect them in the horrendous end they contributed to, in order to maximize that data-dot 'wealth'.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@Ellen North Is you are 100% correct. People whose idea of fending for themselves involves spending money never fare well when money is worthless, nor are they able to suddenly develop the skills they actually need for survival. And that's to say nothing of the fact that the people who have been stepped on for decades aren't exactly ready to turn around and support entitled dead weight.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@WoodsDweller

What can individuals do to protect themselves and their families, and make certain that, together, they do not suffer socially and economically the way the rest of the country will — given where evidence-based logic tells us most of the US is headed?

There is an interconnected web of fail that locked-and-loaded America will experience together, as the nation continues its 40-year slide into poverty, despair, and manufactured paranoia-for-profit. Catastrophic civilian casualties have been thoroughly normalized as a way of life; the ensuing trauma is dismissed. There's a reason for that.

Why isn't that a key topic of conversation among the most intelligent and informed of Americans? Does individually designed survival and healthy transcendence take something away from the rest of society? Would a resourceful and intelligent individual seek guidance from "election winners" to escape the unfolding disaster — a disaster caused by bipartisan policies that result in destructive income inequality? Knowing that, why don't high-quality individuals collaborate on open-source strategies and solutions that will preserve and protect their well-being and their considerable abilities?

Their political savvy and intellectual honesty will be indispensable in blocking any remnants of our current failed ideologies during later-stage recovery. The current crop of self-serving political "captains" have no intention of going down with this ship. Why should you? Society is too divided and the nation too degraded to have any interest in being "stronger together." Decades of corporate rule has conditioned them solely for dog-whistle attacks on people who have "inconvenient" backgrounds, morals, honesty, or fairness.

Yet, discussing high-level strategies intended to safely shuttle evolved individuals into the future is somehow a social injustice.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
WoodsDweller's picture

Possible new tropical depression could dump another 3-5 inches on east Texas and Louisiana next week. A new storm, Irma, is crossing the Atlantic. Some models have it building to Cat 3, no way to know where it will end up at this point. It could fizzle out, of course, too.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

divineorder's picture

@WoodsDweller Jeff Masters became a regular go to.

Didn't check today, but an old friend called out of the blue and mentioned the wave.

Hold on to your hat, mateys!

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@divineorder
and current predictions take it right over Old River Control Systems. If that goes, it's Finis for a lot of things, including New Orleans and all the Big Oil infrastructure built up around it.

Old Man River has been trying for over a hundred years to take over and flow down the Atchafalaya. US Army Corps of Engineers have been fighting a battle they know is a losing one for over fifty years. It's not "if" this happens, it's when.

Preparations for the inevitable? Don't make me laugh!

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

divineorder's picture

@WoodsDweller

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/29/hou...
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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Alphalop's picture

@divineorder

To right click on the link and open in an incognito tab.

Works in a lots of cases for me. (Including this one) Smile

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"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me

ZimInSeattle's picture

planet. As Bill McKibben said recently, we need to switch to 100% renewable energy as fast as humanly possible. Unfortunately, way too much carbon already baked into the climate cake. Kind of ironic how Harvey has hit the number one fossil fuel industry city in the country. We have to get our shit together ASAP or the parasitic human race will not be long for this earth. Paybacks a bitch.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

lotlizard's picture

@ZimInSeattle  
In a dystopian future, Jonathan E and his team are owned by one of the huge corporations now ruling the world in place of national governments — in his case, the one based in Houston, “the Energy City,” presumably in charge of fossil fuel and/or whatever was supposed to have replaced it.

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WoodsDweller's picture

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

WoodsDweller's picture

@Pluto's Republic
@snoopydawg

I no longer think there is any meaningful steps individuals, regardless of wealth, can take to survive. My reference for this was the drought in Sao Paulo. At the other end of the water spectrum we see Houston.
That isn't to say that we can't take steps to reduce our individual footprints, help others, prepare for short term emergencies, or try to keep our heads above economic waters. We can, and we should.
But classic survivalism (I guess survivalists call themselves "preppers" these days) just won't cut it. It was predicated on the idea (fantasy?) of societal collapse in the context of a world that still supports human life. That's not the world we're heading for.
Food, water, shelter.
Your shelter can be wiped out by winds, flood, or wildfire. Those factors can't be addressed individually, only by a functioning society. You can try to manage risk when selecting a site and building your shelter, but megastorms and megafires can easily overwhelm you. You flee and try to pick up the pieces later.
Your carefully designed, lovingly tended Amish farm quits producing food when the rain stops and the Death Valley heatwaves come. No food, no water, at best you're just another refugee.
Your best bet for water supply is to be connected to an urban water system, hopefully one with surplus supply and ample storage to carry you over the drought years. The first thing you can expect during drought is water restrictions. What can you do then?
I told one friend who was looking for things to perhaps do was to set up net-metered solar on the roof, battery backup, and a hydroponic gardening setup in the basement, probably with a cistern plumbed in. With luck you could leverage a meager water supply to produce some fresh veggies to supplement stored food. That would last for a while, until the municipal water system failed altogether. Might buy you a year or two.
I'm convinced that the uber rich think they can retreat to a bunker somewhere. Perhaps the most elaborate scheme I've seen is Larry Ellison's Lenai project. That might last for a decade or more, but it's still on too small a scale to endure.
We're out of time to fix this. We need to buy more time to geo-engineer the planet back to a climate we can thrive in. That's going to take centuries if not millennia. We need scientists, engineers, technicians, medical people, educators, and everyone else it takes to maintain and extend technological civilization over a hundred generations.
Even a luxury bunker housing a rich psychopath and his hangers-on won't make it. Even a military installation set up to survive nuclear war won't last long enough. We don't know how to build things that function for thousands of years. None of them will house enough people. I don't know how many people it takes to maintain civilization, but millions certainly, maybe hundreds of millions.
Individuals won't make it. We either survive together or go down together.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

MsGrin's picture

Am in Austin and our local NPR station gets a few interesting tidbits every so often.

It's a trailer holding peroxide which exploded yesterday morning (as opposed to a whole plant), and more are expected to blow b/c electricity is off & temp is too high for these substances.

Don't worry, no one will be in ANY sort of danger and it won't harm the environment... (also, there's a submerged bridge they'd like to see ya).

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member