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Siphan posted:I went to a union of concerned scientists seminar the other day and their solution to bring climate change down and reduce energy dependence was purchase electric vehicles and more personal responsibility.
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May 30, 2012 16:57
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theflyingorc posted:Please avoid UCS. They're incredibly anti-nuclear and, as all it takes to join is a membership fee, the "scientists" part is basically a misnomer. I learned that very quickly when someone argued that 28 thousand wasn't an unreasonable sum to ask of poor families when I claimed that most americans don't have the capitol to enter that alternative energy market.
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May 30, 2012 17:00
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Siphan posted:I have worked in cancer labs I know that, I am not saying it is some conspiracy but rather a symptom of a larger issue in healthcare. Firms spend billions in R&D knowing that their drug does not cure cancer but only treats parts of the breakdown of normal cell processes, that money comes back to them after you get cancer and are treated with their theoretical drug for months and months to no avail. They aren't suppressing a cure they are producing them faster than ever. So is the suggestion you're making that a some kind of improved cancer cure or a techno-fix for climate would be possible if the funding structure around research were set up differently?
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May 30, 2012 17:09
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Siphan posted:I learned that very quickly when someone argued that 28 thousand wasn't an unreasonable sum to ask of poor families when I claimed that most americans don't have the capitol to enter that alternative energy market. Any major infrastructural change like electric cars or replacing fossil fuel power stations with nuclear or renewables is going to require VAST subsidies (unless the Chinese or Indians crack Thorium and start selling it back to us, which is something I'm very much hoping for). Electric cars are worse than useless until the grid is decarbonised anyway, what with efficiency losses. Really a far far better solution for poorer families would be a well funded affordable public transport system. Rather than replacing cars with more cars, make cars unnecessary in the first place. Tons of less well off folks round my way in a UK city don't even own cars, myself and most of my friends included. I know planning in the states is very different, but there must be SOME locations where this would be feasible?
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May 30, 2012 17:10
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Paper Mac posted:So is the suggestion you're making that a some kind of improved cancer cure or a techno-fix for climate would be possible if the funding structure around research were set up differently? Pretty much all the necessary technologies exist and work. What has proven more problematic is deploying them at sufficient scale, which is a political issue more than a technical one. There are other technologies like CCS which DON'T work yet and could do with more R&D, but we could manage with what we have right now if there was the global political will do do so.
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May 30, 2012 17:13
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Fatkraken posted:Curing various forms of cancer would be SPECTACULARLY profitable. The reason most drugs treat rather than cure is curing cancer is really really hard, not some grand conspiracy. This is true. I recently went to a lecture given by a researcher who works at St. Jude (one of, if not the, leading pediatric cancer research hospital in the nation), and the topic was identifying sequence variants that cause/influence tumor growth. The conclusion was that personalized medicine is going to be a lot more difficult than many people previously thought; different parts of the same tumor can be affected by different variants. This doesn't mean it's *impossible*, though; it's still possible to identify the metabolic pathways associated with certain genes and aim your treatments at that. That being said, I wouldn't discount the possibility of pharmaceutical companies not making a cure widely accessible, in order to maximize profits. The people doing the science mostly don't have profits in mind, but it's obviously the priority of those who will end up marketing the drug(s). A cure probably wouldn't be withheld (it would be hard to do so, since the scientific literature would still exist), but it would likely be priced such that many people can't afford it.
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May 30, 2012 18:03
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Ytlaya posted:This is true. I recently went to a lecture given by a researcher who works at St. Jude (one of, if not the, leading pediatric cancer research hospital in the nation), and the topic was identifying sequence variants that cause/influence tumor growth. The conclusion was that personalized medicine is going to be a lot more difficult than many people previous thought; different parts of the same tumor can be affected by different variants. This doesn't mean it's *impossible*, though; it's still possible to identify the metabolic pathways associated with certain genes and aim your treatments at that. Not a medic, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also the case that 'cancer' isn't one disease, it's a group of diseases that share the defining symptom of out-of-control cell growth? So 'cure for cancer' makes as much sense as 'cure for bacterial inflammations'. Or am I completely off track?
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May 30, 2012 18:05
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schadenfraud posted:Not a medic, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also the case that 'cancer' isn't one disease, it's a group of diseases that share the defining symptom of out-of-control cell growth? So 'cure for cancer' makes as much sense as 'cure for bacterial inflammations'. Or am I completely off track? That's basically correct. I'm not in the medical field either; I work with post-docs/graduate students who study genetics and do programming/web development for an analysis tool they use. It's just interesting that, in addition to different types of cancers being treated differently, different parts of the same tumor can also require different treatment. I believe that this is due to the mutation that occurs in cancer cells. That being said, similar approaches can be used with different types of cancers. But the difference between leukemia (which is blood/bone marrow cancer) and, for example, something like colon cancer is pretty huge. The "cure" will likely need to be personalized for individuals, rather than something that works for all cases of X cancer. One thing about working in science is that it makes arguments against stuff like climate change even more frustrating. People assume that scientists are as dumb as they are and honestly seem to think that climate scientists don't understand something as simple as correlation not always meaning causation. edit: Another thing I see often is people claiming that the climate's extremely high level of complexity makes it a "black box" that we can't possibly know anything about. The fact that a system is too complex to fully understand doesn't mean that you can't still come to solid conclusions about it. Using genetics as an example, identifying the exact factors that affect a particular trait (and how they affect it) is more or less impossible (genes affect other genes, proteins affect other proteins, etc), but that doesn't mean we can't still identify genes that contribute to X and develop treatments based off of that. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:35 on May 30, 2012 |
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May 30, 2012 18:27
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Paper Mac posted:So is the suggestion you're making that a some kind of improved cancer cure or a techno-fix for climate would be possible if the funding structure around research were set up differently? Yes if the structure of research was fundamentally altered to bring about group projects across competing firms (public and private), then in theory we would see a much faster advancement of technology with the purpose of solving problems permanently. However you are not going to see this in a capitalist mode of production, rather what there is a competition between the business aspects to obtain drug commodity rights via patents. This process separates research on many projects like cancer, polyglutamate diseases, climate change even, into teams. It has little to do with funding in my opinion, I believe the money is already in the system. It has to do with the fact that business types are competing against the interests of the population much the same as climate change policy at the government level.
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May 30, 2012 18:39
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schadenfraud posted:Not a medic, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also the case that 'cancer' isn't one disease, it's a group of diseases that share the defining symptom of out-of-control cell growth? So 'cure for cancer' makes as much sense as 'cure for bacterial inflammations'. Or am I completely off track? There is varied and different processes of deregulation in every individuals cancer that differ it from any other type of cancer and from cancers of the same type. That is why when I talk about cancer treatments being exploitative to the population at large I talk about how the billions in R&D for personalized treatments comes out to hundreds of thousands for the individuals with no guarantee for health or future. That is why all the money that goes into the "cure" for cancer could be better spent on preventative healthcare. Just as the money that goes into green technology could be better spent on education and recycling and such. This is all broad and vague in a way but I know that more consumption is not the solution to climate change, in fact it just compounds the problem of separation of consumption from production.
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May 30, 2012 18:45
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Arkane posted:Without really touching on the whole socialist ranting direction this thread has taken, please realize that there is a massive, massive, massive flaw in your worrying, and it is a failure to account for technological advancement. This worship of scientists as having the answers, where scientists become the new "gods" to save humanity is nothing more than an attempt to absolve yourself of any negative externalities of your actions. I feel strongly that I speak on behalf of the vast majority of scientist when I say go to hell. Are you a scientist in a field relevant to addressing climate change? If not, come on down and join people like me in the proverbial trenches before you can think of saying crap like this, because from where I'm standing, the problems are not being addressed in any significant fashion.
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May 30, 2012 19:02
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Arkane posted:But I am wondering...what is going to happen in 50 years? You seem to have these visions of doom, almost as if you want them to occur just to be proved right or something. Things that are likely to happen in the next 100 years: Peak Oil A major disruption in the food chain due to pollution/abnormal climates (something on par with the Dust Bowl, or worse) Things that are unlikely to happen: Climate Change as seen in "The Day After Tomorrow" But yeah good luck with having technology save us when the cheap oil runs out, we'll be too busy killing each other over what's left.
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May 30, 2012 19:56
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McDowell posted:
Thing is, the technology exists. Nuclear power exists, technologies to make nuclear fuel from the ocean exist, technologies which can make oil literally out of the air exist, technologies to pull heat from deep underground to make electricity exist, and there is still time that if there was the will it could be rolled out in time to avoid the worst of the disruption. The issue is there are vested interests working extremely hard to preserve the status quo until everything completely collapses and it is too late to do anything about it. We should be using what we have now to wean ourselves off fossil fuels as fast as possible. Individuals with sufficient influence and governments are not doing this.
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May 30, 2012 20:22
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Fatkraken posted:Pretty much all the necessary technologies exist and work. What has proven more problematic is deploying them at sufficient scale, which is a political issue more than a technical one. There are other technologies like CCS which DON'T work yet and could do with more R&D, but we could manage with what we have right now if there was the global political will do do so. I think this as interesting topic and wonder if you could provide some specific examples and rough costs of large-scale carbon removal systems. My knowledge on the subject is restricted to the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_removal) but there are some interesting points such as cost estimates between $100-$600 per ton of carbon removed from the atmosphere, with doubtful ability to scale. Given that the average North American produces about 18 tons annually this seems unaffordable (or only very marginally affordable). The 2011 APS report also doesn't seem encouraging ( http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=244407 ): "DAC is not currently an economically viable approach to mitigating climate change." . Additionally it seems like planting forests seems like the cheaper long-term option (by far). I think we should be cutting carbon emissions directly through energy consumption cuts and renewable energy, and I contribute to political organizations trying to make this happen. However the political system (at least in North America) seems unlikely to allow this, and the developing world is only going to emit more carbon with time. Of all the geoengineering schemes we'll inevitably attempt direct carbon-dioxide removal seems the least terrible (aside from planting a lot of trees). I realize this is basically hoping science saves us (magical thinking) but there's a good chance we just won't change our consumption.
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May 30, 2012 20:29
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Fatkraken posted:technologies which can make oil literally out of the air exist Haven't heard about this, wanna provide a link?
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May 30, 2012 20:30
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From http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/30/companies-block-action-climate-changequote:Top US companies shelling out to block action on climate change If your not angry yet, your not paying attention.
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May 30, 2012 20:37
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Fatkraken posted:Really a far far better solution for poorer families would be a well funded affordable public transport system. Rather than replacing cars with more cars, make cars unnecessary in the first place. Tons of less well off folks round my way in a UK city don't even own cars, myself and most of my friends included. I know planning in the states is very different, but there must be SOME locations where this would be feasible? I don't drive (never even learned, due to spending most of my life in two countries with excellent public transport) and it's a tremendous pain in the rear end for me to go anywhere that isn't the little strip mall nearby. I'm stubbornly resisting the urge to learn to drive, but I will eventually either have to give in and learn or I will have to move to some other city where public transport is at least a little better than here, because as it is right now I rely on a bus system that is slow and inefficient and occasional rides from other people. the kawaiiest fucked around with this message at 20:46 on May 30, 2012 |
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May 30, 2012 20:44
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stoicheian posted:Haven't heard about this, wanna provide a link? There's several ways to go about it, depending on how you want to go about cracking water to produce hydrogen, how you want to capture CO2 and how you form CO, etc.. Here's how Los Alamos National Labs proposed to do it: http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf The process ultimately depends on the cost of the energy source, since it will require more energy to reform fuels from CO2 and water than what you get from burning it.
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May 30, 2012 21:03
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the kawaiiest posted:II've noticed that having a car (just like having a house that is at least 3 times as big as anyone on this planet would need) is also status thing. 100 years of advertising is a hell of a drug.
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May 30, 2012 21:20
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the kawaiiest posted:I lived in The Netherlands for several years when I was in my early teens. Here in the US, I've noticed that having a car (just like having a house that is at least 3 times as big as anyone on this planet would need) is also status thing. While the type of car you have can certainly be purely a status thing, simply having a car is, as you yourself realize, mostly a matter of convenience. This obviously impacts the way a person will be judged, since someone without a car is generally going to be less capable, less independent, and less social than someone with a car just due to the fact that its very difficult for them to move around. But you can't really blame a status-obsessed society or advertizing for this--not having a car really is a pain in the rear end for most places in the US.
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May 31, 2012 00:42
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Fatkraken posted:Thing is, the technology exists. Nuclear power exists, technologies to make nuclear fuel from the ocean exist, technologies which can make oil literally out of the air exist, technologies to pull heat from deep underground to make electricity exist, and there is still time that if there was the will it could be rolled out in time to avoid the worst of the disruption. The issue is less "vested interests" conspiring against progress, and more that every viable stragegy to grossly reduce emissions has as its backbone truly massive electricity generation by a non-CO2 producing means. This basically means nuclear or win-the-civilization-game-megaproject solar. Ramping these things up to the necesary capacity: 1. Is a lot of work 2. Is really expensive 3. Requires simultaneous, cooperative effort by many large entities to even begin 4. Would take a long time In other words, the "solution" to the problem is the kind of thing that almost no collection of human beings in the history of mankind has ever been able to do sucessfully, because it isn't the kind of thing that can be spearheaded by a small group of people or a single brilliant mind and then take off from there--it requires a whole bunch of people to, all at the same time, decide to do something expensive and difficult for a long period of time with no immediate payoff, to solve a problem that is nebulous, diffuse, and long-term in nature. It isn't a cabal of special interests holding back the tide of progress, it is an inherent limitation of this and pretty much every other civilization. To get around this, you need technology that not only exists, but which constitutes such an overwhelmingly powerful and efficient breakthrough that society has no choice in adopting it. Sadly nothing like that really seems to be in the cards, at least not in the near-medium term.
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May 31, 2012 00:51
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Morbus posted:While the type of car you have can certainly be purely a status thing, simply having a car is, as you yourself realize, mostly a matter of convenience. This obviously impacts the way a person will be judged, since someone without a car is generally going to be less capable, less independent, and less social than someone with a car just due to the fact that its very difficult for them to move around. But you can't really blame a status-obsessed society or advertizing for this--not having a car really is a pain in the rear end for most places in the US. quote:So not only do we have a massive country that was literally built for cars, there's also this whole cultural thing which associates car ownership with personal success.
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May 31, 2012 00:52
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Morbus posted:
Hoover Dam and other WPA projects, the national highway system, decades of botched public projects (coinciding with giant drops in the top marginal tax rate and the subversion of the left  ), literally no hope for the future, etc.gently caress, can we close down the entire site and just be Lovedump 2020?
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May 31, 2012 00:59
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Ytlaya posted:While doing these things is better than not doing them, it's also important to acknowledge that, ultimately, what people choose to do individually is unlikely to have a significant impact. One reason is industrial and/or necessary use >>> use that can be reasonable curtailed on an individual basis. Drops in consumption and waste on an individual level have the possibility of cascading up the supply chain back to the production, which will have to pull back if people stop consuming tons of useless poo poo. If people start buying green/ecofriendly things corporations and industry will be happy to build them.
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May 31, 2012 03:42
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Sylink posted:If people start buying green/ecofriendly things corporations and industry will be happy to build them. Or just start slapping green packaging on the same old poo poo. Remember, those tomatoes might have been grown in Brazil and shipped over on a barge so you can have them in January, but they meet FDA organic standards with less scrutiny than domestic farmers face to get that glossy sticker.  Green has been nothing but a buzzword since late in the last decade. It's the same with all-natural or 'clean,' as in clean coal. Changing what products you consume will hardly do anything so long as over-consumption is still the status quo.
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May 31, 2012 07:02
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Fatkraken posted:Any major infrastructural change like electric cars or replacing fossil fuel power stations with nuclear or renewables is going to require VAST subsidies (unless the Chinese or Indians crack Thorium and start selling it back to us, which is something I'm very much hoping for). Electric cars are worse than useless until the grid is decarbonised anyway, what with efficiency losses. To be honest, its only currently feasible in the hearts of our biggest cities. Having a subway or light rail system is basically what decides this. Having a single bus come by once every hour and not even reliably on schedule is what passes for a robust public transport system in most cities. Even that wouldn't be a huge issue, but our pattern of development is different in the US. While a typical European pattern is biased towards compact outlying towns, the US just lets the cities sprawl outwards, rolling out miles and miles of residential development with highways leading to and from the commercial areas (aka where most people work) but lacking in any reliable public system to commute people to and from work, as well as being rather hostile to biking due to the usage of sidewalk-free arterial or beltway roads and no safe way to get across. Oh, and in some places riding a bike through the burbs would get some stay-puft fatass to go call the cops on you.
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May 31, 2012 07:49
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There was a time that I lived 2 miles away from work. Driving that distance seemed absolutely pointless, as it was around the time that gas first hit $4 a gallon in these parts. If the weather really sucked, I'd drive because I had a LOT of "face time" with customers and had to be presentable, obviously. And being soaking wet was most certainly not "presentable." Even so, I'd ride my bike to work most days. I figured, it was a short ride. Got me extra exercise and saved me gas money. My coworkers literally thought I was insane. They couldn't even fathom the idea that I rode my bike to work. Nor did they take it well when they realized that I generally rode my bike to run errands whenever possible. I'd ride it to the bank, which was also close, and ride it with a backpack to the store if only needed less things than fit in a backpack. Major grocery runs I took the car, but generally I tried to do it by bike. My car mostly just sat there the majority of the time. They were seriously visibly and noticeably confused that I would actively choose riding my bike for anything that wasn't exercise. Or that I'd ride it to the bike trail instead of driving my car there with a bike on it. The thing of it is, cars have become so deeply ingrained into the cultural fabric of America that removing them is going to be really, really impossible. There is also the problem that bike commuters are frequently viewed as tree-hugging hippies that hate capitalism. If you walk anywhere, ever, people accuse you of having too much time on your hands. Our culture is so geared toward everything faster, right now, that people think you're loving insane if you ever choose not to drive.
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May 31, 2012 08:12
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The thing of it is, cars have become so deeply ingrained into the cultural fabric of America that removing them is going to be really, really impossible. There is also the problem that bike commuters are frequently viewed as tree-hugging hippies that hate capitalism. If you walk anywhere, ever, people accuse you of having too much time on your hands. Our culture is so geared toward everything faster, right now, that people think you're loving insane if you ever choose not to drive. It's extremely weird to be the only person on the sidewalk and I feel like people are constantly judging me based on the fact that I don't drive. It's one of the few things about this country that I don't like, and I don't think I'll ever get used to it.
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May 31, 2012 08:25
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TheFuglyStik posted:Green has been nothing but a buzzword since late in the last decade. It's the same with all-natural or 'clean,' as in clean coal. Changing what products you consume will hardly do anything so long as over-consumption is still the status quo.
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May 31, 2012 08:33
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the kawaiiest posted:Yeah, I feel tremendously uncomfortable, almost like there's something wrong with me, because I don't drive. When I ask for directions, everyone assumes that I'm driving somewhere and looks at me funny when I tell them that I'm walking. Yeah, there was a time that I lost my license due to medical things. Basically, I had a seizure and in this state, that automatically makes you lose your license for half a year. Understandable, really. Don't want people having a seizure at the controls of a heavy machine capable of spreading destruction and havoc. But what really drove me insane was when people assumed that I was just lying to cover up a DUI. It was really, really irritating. Same thing at times where I've walked places. And you're right, people look at you weird and assume you're a drunk that's not allowed to drive or some lazy poor that can't afford a car due to lazy.
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May 31, 2012 09:04
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Same thing at times where I've walked places. And you're right, people look at you weird and assume you're a drunk that's not allowed to drive or some lazy poor that can't afford a car due to lazy. Oh well, at least the burgers are good.
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May 31, 2012 09:09
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If anyone is interested, a paper was published in Nature showing that climate change polarization is attributable to culture rather than scientific illiteracy. Fox News reported on it as 'scientific literacy correlates to climate change skepticism?' If this sounds interesting or you want to not get caught off guard by Fox News' lie, here you go: Article, free PDFAbstract posted:Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare. It's only a few pages and with two big graphs, so it's a short read.
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May 31, 2012 09:37
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This US car-chat is nuts. I'm in the UK. I live on the outskirts of one of our bigger cities, population somewhere around 550,000 people. I'm right on the edge in a swallowed village, walk 15 minutes in the other direction and it's fields and woodlands. I think we're about 5-6 miles from the city centre. There is a bus stop 2 minutes walk from the house. Buses leave every 10-15 minutes throughout the day. About 20 minutes away on foot or 5 minutes on a connecting bus is the end of the tram line, the trams go straight to the centre in under 15 minutes. Because there are dedicated tram lines that don't always overlap the roads in the rush hour it's a lot quicker to take the tram than to drive, and the carriages are clean, modern and very safe. The trams are well used and fill to capacity at peak hours even running every 5-10 minutes. The nearest big supermarket is 2 miles away. While most people do drive to this one (as I used to when I still had a car), there are good links: buses and trams stop right outside. Not owning a car is only a mild inconvenience for single people, and while a family shop would be harder to fit on the bus, there are delivery services from almost all the major supermarkets. There is a primary school, a secondary school and a nursery within 10 minutes walk, if you go past at 3:30 the pavement is CROWDED with kids and parents walking home. In fact, most of the pavements are pretty well populated, it's not like there's no traffic but there are a lot of walkers too. The city centre is largely pedestrianised. Unless you are disabled, have a large family with no good school nearby, have a job in an area where you cannot afford to live or have other special circumstances it is NOT necessary to own a car around here. I have not noticed and significant drop in my quality of life since giving mine up. Bar occasional taxis and hire cars for longer trips 2-3 times a year, public transport is plenty On the US front, I've heard stories of huge swaths of low density housing which were built during the bubble being completely unsellable now because they are too far from any services and people in the area cannot afford to run a car because of gas prices. Is this the case? Fatkraken fucked around with this message at 10:43 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 10:39
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the kawaiiest posted:Yep. And I bet people would continue to take their cars even if we had kickass public transport, because cars are also a status thing here and not driving means you're a filthy poor or something. Nothing is going to make people stop driving, I literally cannot even imagine this happening. Sucks for me, because I don't know how to drive and don't really want to learn and this is where I'm going to spend the rest of my life. I'd use the everloving gently caress out of public transportation if the US got a good system, for one. I could nap and read on the way to work or not have to worry about driving if I had to be in another state soon or something. And trains are faster than cars. I'd rather ride a bullet train 1,000 miles than drive that goddamned far. Which is another thing I hear. People are like but public transit is so IIIIINCONVEEEENIENT. Like, the idea of waiting ten minutes for a bus is utterly alien to a lot of people. And then they're all like "but I don't want to deal with homeless people and drug addicts." It's like they just want to shut off the outside world and live in their magic bubble where everything is perfect. Makes me facepalm very hard. I hear things like "but what would I do while sitting there waiting for the bus?" I don't know, make small talk with the person behind you? Write text messages? Read a book? Nap? Knit? Feed pigeons? Possibilities are endless. But god drat do they bitch and moan about traffic. Holy poo poo do they moan about traffic. Totally ignoring the fact that if America had a less lovely public transportation network traffic would mysteriously get reduced dramatically. But no, we can't do that sort of thing because MAH TAAAAXES!!!! Which is absurd...if taxes go up to improve public transportation. And you use it. You're spending less on gas. Duh.
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May 31, 2012 11:06
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Radd McCool posted:If anyone is interested, a paper was published in Nature showing that climate change polarization is attributable to culture rather than scientific illiteracy. Fox News reported on it as 'scientific literacy correlates to climate change skepticism?' If this sounds interesting or you want to not get caught off guard by Fox News' lie, here you go: Article, free PDF Holy poo poo are the spazzy conservatives twisting the gently caress out of this study. Here are some headlines, some news sites, some blogs, around the net: "Climate Change Skeptics Score High Marks in Scientific Literacy Test" "Higher science scores lead to less climate change concern" "Yale Study: Global warming skepticism correlates positively with scientific literacy" "Higher science scores equal less climate change concern" "Told Ya So!!! Skeptics More Scientific Than Alarmists!" "Study: Climate Change Skeptics Know More About Science Than Believers" "Climate change skeptics have the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity” and on and on and on and on  What it *actually* says quote:We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. That second sentence is a bit inconvenient for the angries. Its not saying denialists are MORE scientific, its saying that scientific literacy merely polarized the debate further. Implication being that the dunning kurger effect is not as large here as previously anticipated and lower scientific literacy folks appear to be aware that they dont have the full capacity to assess the data. It sure as gently caress doesnt mean "only dummies believe in climate change!", it means "education isn't a defence against being wrong". Alternative study conclusion I propose: The people might be bad at gauging scientific consensus and forming opinions at it, but the media are blatantly loving horrible at reporting science and in some cases blatantly lying. duck monster fucked around with this message at 11:38 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 11:31
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In Vancouver, public transit doesn't seem to have a status thing attached to it. Everyone uses it. We use it even though we have a car too. In the states, most cities are lacking public transit, though Chicago and NYC seem okay. You get a lot of urban sprawl with no transit, requiring you to drive. It's a byproduct of the car and oil industry infrastructure. I wanted to support Sledgehammer's viewpoint that it's not just climate change we need to worry about. Climate change working in tandem with resource depletion, pollution, and a huge population WILL change our lifestyles drastically at some point in time because it is impossible for our planet to support the consumerist population it has forever, and there is no movement big enough at the moment to curb our unsustainable lifestyles. I'm actually editing a fictional book I wrote that is set in such a quite changed world near the end of the century. It's not all gloom and doom, because there are hopefully interesting characters who, despite hardship and struggle, are learning how to not repeat mistakes. If anyone's interested in a review e-copy, let me know. I'm still doing quite a bit of revision though. Also, I want to recommend another book that inspired some of the motifs in my book, and that is Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. http://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-An-Adventure-Mind-Spirit/dp/0553375407 Ishmael is basically one long Socratic dialog between a man and a talking gorilla that deductively and systematically reveals how we got to the point we're at today. The novel is a philosophical one, of course, but it would make a good summer read.
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May 31, 2012 11:39
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Radd McCool posted:If anyone is interested, a paper was published in Nature showing that climate change polarization is attributable to culture rather than scientific illiteracy. Fox News reported on it as 'scientific literacy correlates to climate change skepticism?' If this sounds interesting or you want to not get caught off guard by Fox News' lie, here you go: Article, free PDF Similarly, Mark Latham, former Labor leader in Australia, wrote this and I think it rings very true, at least for Australia: http://afr.com/p/lifestyle/review/climate_change_denial_not_just_for_sFAw16a7QU34KIj2tmN4eJ
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May 31, 2012 11:59
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Fatkraken posted:The nearest big supermarket is 2 miles away. While most people do drive to this one (as I used to when I still had a car), there are good links: buses and trams stop right outside. Not owning a car is only a mild inconvenience for single people, and while a family shop would be harder to fit on the bus, there are delivery services from almost all the major supermarkets. duck monster posted:That second sentence is a bit inconvenient for the angries. Its not saying denialists are MORE scientific, its saying that scientific literacy merely polarized the debate further. Implication being that the dunning kurger effect is not as large here as previously anticipated and lower scientific literacy folks appear to be aware that they dont have the full capacity to assess the data.
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May 31, 2012 18:54
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Fatkraken posted:On the US front, I've heard stories of huge swaths of low density housing which were built during the bubble being completely unsellable now because they are too far from any services and people in the area cannot afford to run a car because of gas prices. Is this the case? I haven't heard of that but then again I haven't really been following news in that field. God I hope so, though.
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May 31, 2012 18:57
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TACD posted:I was absolutely gobsmacked at this difference when I moved to the US. For the past 3-4 years in the UK, living in London (so obviously without a car) I've grown to love the home delivery service offered by every supermarket and pretty much relied on it. I would assume the US would freaking love that kind of service, but it barely exists over here. It's just not a thing. I could understand certain areas not being eligible because the US has some pretty loving remote locations but it just doesn't seem to be offered anywhere. There's a grocery store near me that offers that, and people just make fun of it. Not because you should be walking instead (this is a pretty high density area), but because it means you're too lazy to drive a mile to the store. 
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May 31, 2012 19:05
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