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Office Thug posted:Nuclear terrorism is never going to be easy. How are they not going to steal that? Again, the stuff has already been stolen multiple times, it's been caught more than a few times going across the Russian border. Not only has it already been stolen multiple times, it will only becomes easier as more HEU is created and more nations are creating it. As previously mentioned the pressures from global issues like climate change, resource scarcity, famine, war, etc. which it seems like the thread is willing to agree are coming down the pipeline and they will only make it easier for third parties to obtain the material. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/07/nuclear-material-black-market-georgia http://news.oneindia.in/2007/01/29/russia-considers-investigating-uranium-theft-1170095675.html http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/proliferation/chronology-fissile-material-theft.htm And yes, I'm aware of the much larger technical hurdles for making other bomb designs which is why I think the gun-type nuclear bomb is by far the most likely to be detonated by a non-state actor. Also, I'd just like to point out that I understand the quantities already stolen are not really close to what you'd need to make a large nuclear weapon but I don't think it's that outlandish to posit that a group could obtain a large enough quantity given enough sources (or the right source) and time. a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 20:09
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WoodrowSkillson posted:It will not lead to the dissolution of major governments and the complete breakdown of international relations. Tell me - how would you describe what is happening in, say, Libya, Syria, Egypt, or, hell, Europe? Bear in mind that the Arab Spring had a great deal to do with rising food prices.
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Oct 10, 2012 20:31
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a lovely poster posted:How are they not going to steal that? Again, the stuff has already been stolen multiple times, it's been caught more than a few times going across the Russian border. Not only has it already been stolen multiple times, it will only becomes easier as more HEU is created and more nations are creating it. As previously mentioned the pressures from global issues like climate change, resource scarcity, famine, war, etc. which it seems like the thread is willing to agree are coming down the pipeline and they will only make it easier for third parties to obtain the material. What I find difficult to understand in terms of uranium procurement via theft is Iraq's case of enriched uranium. Iraq, with an army, power, and wealth that would dwarf most terrorist organizations, still needed to resort to developping calutrons to enrich its own uranium in the hopes of possibly building a weapon (which fortunately never happened). It's very difficult to believe that a singular terrorist group could ever hope to acquire enough stolen uranium to build a bomb if an entire loving state couldn't do it. Pure U-235's critical mass is also nothing to sneeze at, being 47.9 kilograms. You need more as you deal with lower purities. So again, I meant what I said in that a terrorist organizations is never going to run into a significant enough amount of the stuff. A rogue state, likely, because they could just make their own if they really wanted to like Iraq did, but not a singular James Bond villainesq group. In terms of theft, HEU is typically transported in a chemical state that can't be readily assembled into a weapon. Take research reactor HEU for example, which can be transported and used in forms like uranium silicide compounds. You need to use chlorine trifluoride to break that stuff down, a substance you will not be able to find in a "post-apocalyptic" climate change world, and also not a substance you will want to find, period. I'm not saying Russians stored their uranium as something untangible and that people didn't just steal a bunch of chemically pure uranium. That stuff's long-gone and probably ended up in Israel which can make its own weapons-grade material anyways. However there's no reason to discontinue using uranium if you actively excercise caution by making its proliferation as difficult as humanly possible. a lovely poster posted:Also, I'd just like to point out that I understand the quantities already stolen are not really close to what you'd need to make a large nuclear weapon but I don't think it's that outlandish to posit that a group could obtain a large enough quantity given enough sources (or the right source) and time. With enough time and money, you could just make your own HEU, which is what everyone that has weapons has needed to resort to. We can't stop people from figuring out how to make nuclear bombs on their own. We can deter the use of nuclear weapons by averting the climate change crisis, which will necessitate the use of both nuclear and renewables in order to displace fossil fuel sources as rapidly as possible.
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Oct 10, 2012 22:33
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Office Thug posted:What I find difficult to understand in terms of uranium procurement via theft is Iraq's case of enriched uranium. Iraq, with an army, power, and wealth that would dwarf most terrorist organizations, still needed to resort to developping calutrons to enrich its own uranium in the hopes of possibly building a weapon (which fortunately never happened). It's very difficult to believe that a singular terrorist group could ever hope to acquire enough stolen uranium to build a bomb if an entire loving state couldn't do it. So what you're saying is that a dirty bomb is the most likely outcome of a terror group obtaining fissile material, unless for some reason they steal a complete weapon? That's how I've seen it for a while, though not as in depth. The poo poo that would make it easy is not obtainable without a state-scale budget, and the easily obtainable stuff is not useful without a state-scale budget. It's like free guns but million dollar bullets. And dirty bombs are not as big a threat as politicians will tell you, they just spread the glowy poo poo all over and then it gets cleaned up along with stuff in the immediate vicinity. Sure, you might see a few months where backhoes are digging a hole in the ground and demolishing buildings in an area. The biggest threat from a dirty bomb is containment of the contamination. It isn't like terrorists are going to blow up a bomb in a lake somewhere, they'll blow it in a city, where the concrete and asphalt can just be taken away, the ground scooped out and filled back in, and the place brought back to a normal appearance within a year or two, government overreaction notwithstanding. E: on rereading I would like to clarify that last paragraph as not an expression of  conspiracy stuff, just the garden variety overblown threat used as an excuse to keep spying on people or defense spending hikes or what have you. They're still dangerous, but not on the "that proof will come in the form of a mushroom cloud" scale.
FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Oct 11, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 23:16
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I actually think that dissolution of major governments and breakdowns in international relations are likely results of climate change and they do not constitute a collapse of civilization. I guess we need to have a shared definition of societal collapse if we want to continue this conversation in a meaningful way.
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Oct 11, 2012 03:38
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Arglebargle III posted:I actually think that dissolution of major governments and breakdowns in international relations are likely results of climate change and they do not constitute a collapse of civilization. I disagree. There will be no complete 'societal collapse' as long as groups of people interact with other groups of people, as we always have. It has been outlined many of the potential direct impacts of climate change that are ongoing (increasing likelihood of drought, decreasing baseflows of rivers due to lack of glacier replenishment, crop failure etc.). I agree societal collapse is unlikely, but serious, measurable impacts are already being felt. I study ice climate in the Arctic and our field can see very clearly that we'll have an ice-free summer within the decade (very likely), and that will drastically affect the oceanography and stratification of the Arctic. This will in turn affect potential fisheries in the circumpolar world. It's the aggregate of many of these changes: some small, some large, some sudden and some very slow. If it is slow enough society will adapt and hopefully few people will suffer, if not we're in for serious trouble of which no one can predict the magnitude.
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Oct 11, 2012 05:46
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The Entire Universe posted:So what you're saying is that a dirty bomb is the most likely outcome of a terror group obtaining fissile material, unless for some reason they steal a complete weapon? Dirty bombs wouldn't disperse their material over a large enough area to be all that effective. It wouldn't even be comparable to a release accident from a reactor, in which the majority of your radiological dispersal happens through short-lived Radioxenon gas which climbs up into the atmosphere and decays into nasty poo poo like iodine-131 and caesium-137, which rain back down. Most importantly however, radiation doesn't kill people fast enough to be made into an effective weapon. The biggest killer from conventional nuclear weapons is the thermal shockwave, with even harsh radiation types such as neutron radiation being a mere cleanup concern in comparison (if there's anything left to cleanup). I have always been more concerned about chemical weapons as the "poor-man's" nuke because most rogue states can produce vast amounts of the stuff and its effects are quick, sometimes difficult to detect, and acutely deadly. You don't have time to get out of the way with this stuff, it spreads everywhere and kills everyone in a large area within minutes. It's especially effective in enclosed spaces like cities where it can linger. Again though, the concerns about waste being used in nuclear bombs could largely be addressed by using breeders to destroy transuranics and stabilize most fission products, all while producing electricity. If you want to get rid of waste very quickly and are not concerned about energy production, you can also build a fusion reactor "furnace" that obliterates everything with large amounts of neutron radiation. Either way politicians need to realize that the problem isn't going to go away any time soon unless you use some form of nuclear technology to solve it.
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Oct 11, 2012 13:49
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This Daily Mail article is popping up on my newsfeed, and I'm not well versed enough in the field to rebut it. Best I can do is the Grist article on the subject but something specific would be nice. Also I can't find the study the story references, but the Met Office website isn't great. EDIT: I should be clear I know the source is biased as gently caress. But I didn't think it was bad enough to make up government study. EDIT EDIT: Oh look it's already covered by the "crazy forward e-mail" thread. More information would be nice though. 
Boxman fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 00:09
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Boxman posted:This Daily Mail article is popping up on my newsfeed, and I'm not well versed enough in the field to rebut it. Best I can do is the Grist article on the subject but something specific would be nice. Also I can't find the study the story references, but the Met Office website isn't great. 1997-1998 had a very strong El Nino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%F1o%96Southern_Oscillation), a roughly 5 year cyclical event with increased temperatures. The implications of putting the start of a temperature plot at 1997 should be obvious. Why not start at 1995 or 1990 or 1980?
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Oct 15, 2012 01:55
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Boxman posted:This Daily Mail article is popping up on my newsfeed, and I'm not well versed enough in the field to rebut it. Best I can do is the Grist article on the subject but something specific would be nice. Also I can't find the study the story references, but the Met Office website isn't great. Its cranky. I'd ignore it. Until the IPCC come out and say "Great news guys!" its just one piece of data by one researcher who may or may not have an axe to grind.
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Oct 15, 2012 02:22
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More to the point, it focuses on one part of the picture (atmospheric temperatures), and ignores the total heat content of the earth: http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=4 and also ignores the top of atmosphere radiation imbalance (there is more energy coming in than is going out - and therefore by elementary thermodynamics, the earth will heat until that balance is reestablished). A double cherrypick (when combined with the convenient choice of starting year) if you like.
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Oct 15, 2012 03:17
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To elaborate on the lovely crap that article is pulling: First, let's start with a link to temperature, CO2 emissions, sea level, and ice extent from NASA. And if NASA isn't credible enough, they also have tons of citations and links to other sources. Now let's take a loot at global sea-land temperature:  Well that's pretty obviously going up. But if you do this:  ...wow! It's not so threatening now, is it? Yes, if you cherry-pick data, you can do amazing things! The article is pretty clear biased. For example, look how this section is written: That lovely Denialist Rag posted:Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions. Then you get poo poo like "Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of 'natural variability'..." which is something climate scientists have been saying for ages: Climate is super loving complicated, and we still don't understand large parts of it. We do understand thermodynamics, though, and have enough data and models to accurately predict the globe is without a doubt warming. Here's some other problems with that article:
That article is biased and full of poo poo.
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Oct 15, 2012 06:29
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The bit some of thees articles miss is that they assume climate researchers WANT there to be climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. I know my sis said that part of her reason for pulling out of frontline research (other than the harrassment) was that she almost felt sick sometimes going over the data on west australian water supplies and the potential implications for the state she loves. It was just getting too hard to stay positive, especially when you have collegues who talk about not having kids because "Its wrong to subject them to whats coming" etc. I can tell you this. If real solid science emerged to say "Hey, this poo poo isn't happening, we're going to be OK", guys like Mann would not be trying to argue against it, they'd be dancing in the street. Nobody wants this climate change. But physics isn't a democracy.
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Oct 16, 2012 00:46
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Any widespread acknowledgment of the absurd inequality of the "climate change debate" would then be just a small step away from acknowledging the realities of income disparity and political and media control, so there are so many vested interests combating such an elucidation.
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Oct 16, 2012 01:24
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Who has an economic interest in climate change denial? Death to Fossil Fuels.
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Oct 16, 2012 01:26
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Boxman posted:This Daily Mail article is popping up on my newsfeed, and I'm not well versed enough in the field to rebut it. Best I can do is the Grist article on the subject but something specific would be nice. Also I can't find the study the story references, but the Met Office website isn't great. The specific point they're making isn't factually wrong, it's just the conclusions that are wrong. They are correct that the air temperature, if you pick that specific date range, has indeed plateaued. The problem is, why select 1998 as your starting year, and why would you only look at air temperatures? To accurately predict where we're heading, you need to look at a longer timeline, and include the entire climate system. Physics says the earth is absorbing heat. If the air isn't getting hotter currently, then either physics is wrong, or the excess heat must be going into the oceans. Also, as you can see here, we are just emerging from a solar minimum nadir that was lower than the previous three cycles (going back to 1975). Could very easily have 2-3 very hot years, if we, for example, hit a strong El Nino simultaneously with solar maximums. 
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Oct 16, 2012 02:27
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McDowell posted:Who has an economic interest in climate change denial? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNdhFi3MHZQ
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Oct 16, 2012 03:18
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lapse posted:Also, as you can see here, we are just emerging from a solar minimum nadir that was lower than the previous three cycles (going back to 1975). Could very easily have 2-3 very hot years, if we, for example, hit a strong El Nino simultaneously with solar maximums. While the article is wrong for the reasons you stated (cherry-picking data), this is not a very good supporting argument. It is true that the decade-long sunspot cycle affects the total amount of solar energy striking the earth, but the effect is not significant for global climate unless viewed over a very, very long period. Simply eyeballing your graph, the 1yr mean peaks at about 1366.5 and troughs at 1365.5, a variation of about 0.07% (across 5 years!). For perspective, the yearly variation in insolation caused by earth's elliptical orbit is about 9500 times larger than this. I would not be surprised if the solar reflection caused by the cloudtops of a small tropical storm outshined this, let alone periodic climate patterns like El Nino. You'd need at least a few thousand years of data to establish a meaningful correlation between solar cycles and global temperature. I threw together a quick and dirty correlation chart illustrating this using whatever data I could find quickly on wikipedia:  Source File - If anyone wants to improve on it, feel free - admitted flaws include only using yearly resolution, and lack of irradiance data from multiple instruments (thus no post-2003 satellite data).
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Oct 16, 2012 07:07
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Welp. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering quote:A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal. What a mess. Russ George has been involved with cold fusion schemes in the past, so I doubt there will be any useful data coming out of this. Hopefully the Canadians catch up with him and sort him out.
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Oct 16, 2012 16:50
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Can't wait for the next eccentric millionaire with initiative to begin pumping sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere.
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Oct 16, 2012 17:15
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Yeah, this is why the international community needs to come to terms with geoengineering and sort out strategies and methods for employing geoengineering (because we are probably going to anyway in the future) otherwise every nutbar with enough money or a country that's being hit hard by climate change will just chuck its GDP at the problem regardless of the large, global, consequences. I know scientists are weary of geoengineering because a solution for a complex system like the climate is difficult to predict and harder to control but legal treaties and gutted environmental agencies aren't enough to stop people from pulling this poo poo.
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Oct 16, 2012 21:25
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Painkiller posted:Welp. There appears to be some division in the news media over what the purpose of the dumping was. This article claims that it was intended to increase phytoplankton levels to revive salmon fisheries in the area.
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Oct 16, 2012 22:14
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Just in case you were still tempted to feel the slightest bit optimistic about any of this: An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces quote:In this post, I will summarize what the recent scientific literature says are the key impacts we face in the coming decades if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. These include: I'm not going to quote the whole thing because it's goddamn long and has charts and links out the wazoo, but if you wanted a roundup of just how hosed we are in every arena then this should really brighten your day.
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Oct 16, 2012 23:55
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TACD posted:Just in case you were still tempted to feel the slightest bit optimistic about any of this:
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Oct 17, 2012 07:22
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Wolfy posted:Hell and high water. I like that. I mean I don't like that, but I like it. God we are so hosed. Nobody is ever going to listen, are they? If you're not in your 40's and up yet, hurry up. I figure they'll get out of this totally pain free.
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Oct 17, 2012 07:26
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Yiggy posted:If you're not in your 40's and up yet, hurry up. I figure they'll get out of this totally pain free.  I just don't understand how the environment is always on the back burner.
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Oct 17, 2012 07:37
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duck monster posted:The bit some of thees articles miss is that they assume climate researchers WANT there to be climate change. - grant money (this is so  that I don't even know where to begin)- rapture equivalent (repent from your sinful ways, return the earth to Gaia, don't have kids, promote homosexuality, murder 5 billion people in the name of ecofascism, etc.)
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Oct 17, 2012 11:05
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Wolfy posted:22 As Al Gore said, on one side of the scale you've got a big pile of gold bars, and on the other you've got the whole planet.
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Oct 17, 2012 13:35
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Wolfy posted:22 Money. It's not just greed either; our economic system is fundamentally blind to environmental damage and its costs because it predates environmentalism. People who benefit from the current system oppose amending this problem because established economic activities would suddenly start losing money if made to pay for their damage. They portray such a shift negative for the economy, when it's actually a net positive; and they get away with the argument because present economic calculations just leave out environmental damage.
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Oct 17, 2012 13:50
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Like ArgleBargle said - our Economic system works through a system of demand; if there were a huge spike in the economic demand for a cleaner environment, more biodiversity, and you could put a value on that demand, then those factors would be reflected in our economic reality. Unfortunately, the value for many of these tends to only go up once these environmental systems are severely threatened on the brink of dissapearance - at which point it takes a lot more effort and cost to return these systems back to their original state... Perhaps the other issue is our sole focus on "GDP" as an indicator for wealth. Hopefully in the future we will start to see nations rated on other indicators other than just GDP that take into account many other factors that are priceless (community, happiness, health, etc...) That, and the tragedy of the commons.
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Oct 17, 2012 14:34
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The problem is fundamentally one of influence. There's definitely impetus for change. Somewhat unsurprisingly, most of it seems to be coming from the global south rather than the north. Here's the Pew Global Attitudes Project take on it (2009):  This was a large survey, covering 26,397 interviews, so it fairly accurately represents global perceptions on global warming at large. As you can see, almost every major supporter of the proposition of global warming being dangerous is from areas thought of traditionally as the global south, while countries like the U.S. and Britain are decidedly more divided on the issue. Somewhat surprisingly, areas of rapid economic growth - China and India especially - are the most adamant supporters of protecting the environment to the detriment of jobs and growth. The two aren't entirely linked, as you can tell by the statistics (with the Chinese paradoxically being the least supportive of global warming as a vital issue while also being the second most supportive of sacrificing growth to protect the environment), but they do show broad overall trends of the general population believing in the problem of climate change and a majority willingness to sacrifice prosperity for the purposes of protecting the environment. The indication the statistics seem to give is that it is not some broad element of the population that opposes policy that would help to protect the environment and mitigate/reduce global warming, but rather interested elites who control the money supply and therefore the policy. I hate sounding like a broken record in every goddamn thread I post in, but the problem here is, once more, late capitalism and the obscene power of the current bourgeois oligarchy. Edit: Here's the one chart I forgot and which is highly relevant: Should higher prices be paid to address global climate change?  Again, very similar trends, although one starts to see the divisions between the global south and global north a lot more keenly. Vermain fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 21:00
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Have any of you read Timescape by Gregory Benford? I found it a bit tedious but holy poo poo does that talk of a geoengineered algal bloom in the link that Painkiller posted remind of that novel and make my skin crawl.
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Oct 17, 2012 21:08
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Painkiller posted:Welp. Dreylad posted:Yeah, this is why the international community needs to come to terms with geoengineering and sort out strategies and methods for employing geoengineering (because we are probably going to anyway in the future) otherwise every nutbar with enough money or a country that's being hit hard by climate change will just chuck its GDP at the problem regardless of the large, global, consequences. I need to read this thread more regularly! PhD candidate here wrapping up the last year of my thesis, I'm an oceanographer and can chime in about ocean stuff. While I agree with Dreylad in general (that geoengineering needs to be more actively pursued by the scientific community), there are a lot better candidates than iron fertilization. Altering ocean alkalinity would be a far smarter option, for example. Part of me is a little worried that successful/promising geoengineering projects will lull us all into a false sense of having solved the problem such that we don't actually address the root causes (burning fossil fuels, slash and burn agriculture, fertilizers, livestock, etc). Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 07:14
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Pellisworth posted:
Agreed, at best they're a palliative. At worse they're like the pain med shots you give a pro athlete to get them back in the game, where they go on to exacerbate the injury way worse than it'd have ever been had they just cooled their jets a little.
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Oct 18, 2012 14:09
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Pellisworth posted:While I agree with Dreylad in general (that geoengineering needs to be more actively pursued by the scientific community), there are a lot better candidates than iron fertilization. Altering ocean alkalinity would be a far smarter option, for example. Oh, yeah, I mean I'm not saying we just dive into a geo-engineering project without considering our options and spend as much time as we can coming up with a solution that wont make things worse, or damage other things at the same time. I know one person posted an article (it might have been you?) that showed that iron fertilization was a terrible, terrible idea and could make things worse. I recognize that what we're dealing with is a very complex system and that there might be no one solution. And yes, absolutely, there is the danger that we treat geoengineering like a permanent fix to our C02 production. Geoengineering should not be treated as anything more as triage for our climate until we can get our emissions under control and let the positive feedback effects from our emissions slow down. I don't think it's a permanent solution at all.
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Oct 18, 2012 14:41
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Dreylad posted:I recognize that what we're dealing with is a very complex system and that there might be no one solution.
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Oct 18, 2012 15:12
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Dreylad posted:Oh, yeah, I mean I'm not saying we just dive into a geo-engineering project without considering our options and spend as much time as we can coming up with a solution that wont make things worse, or damage other things at the same time. I know one person posted an article (it might have been you?) that showed that iron fertilization was a terrible, terrible idea and could make things worse. I did post early on in the thread about iron fertilization, yeah. In some sense, we're already in the middle of a massive geo-engineering project entitled "What happens when we flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and dick around with its ozone chemistry, dam all the rivers, burn a bunch of forests, and generally gently caress everything up?" Fundamentally, we don't really even understand much about what we're doing to the environment now, much less all the myriad feedbacks and how things will look in future decades. I think we should actively pursue geoengineering to relieve some of the tremendous pain we have coming, but we just goddamn don't know very much about the complex systems we're trying to play with. I have a long rant about science funding I could write up someday. Admittedly I have a bias being a scientist myself, but as a nation our investment into basic (non-biomedical) research is absolutely laughable, and the scientific community has very little public credibility and political influence in the climate arena. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 22:03
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Pellisworth posted:I have a long rant about science funding I could write up someday. Admittedly I have a bias being a scientist myself, but as a nation our investment into basic (non-biomedical) research is absolutely laughable, and the scientific community has very little public credibility and political influence in the climate arena. Is this not a good thing (somewhat) that the scientific community remains outside the political sphere? If there is one thing that Carl Sagan and David Suzuki imprinted on me through their books; it's that science isn't a good thing - nor is it a bad thing - it just "is". If policy-changing discoveries are found by using the methods of science, well, that is up to our elected officials to debate. (I like it that the scientific community remains un-attached to the political sphere - because that tends to give them a lot more credibility when calling out the government when a policy decision goes against a scientific discovery. That being said; it would be wonderful if our elected officials had a bigger background in science. I wonder if part of the reason Margaret Thatcher threw her support on working a ban on CFC production was because she used to be a chemist?).
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Oct 19, 2012 14:59
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Guigui posted:Is this not a good thing (somewhat) that the scientific community remains outside the political sphere? If there is one thing that Carl Sagan and David Suzuki imprinted on me through their books; it's that science isn't a good thing - nor is it a bad thing - it just "is". If policy-changing discoveries are found by using the methods of science, well, that is up to our elected officials to debate. I actually think that this is a BIG problem rather than a good thing. There is no reason why science and scientists should not be more involved in public debate and politics, especially where science can provide objective guidelines for legislature. For that to happen, though, you need to have scientists with a political conscience to push for recognition of application of their knowledge. On the ethics and morality of science and the corresponding intersection with politics - that's a different issue. And I'm not sure that the notion of "science is neither good nor bad" is not too naive of a cop-out for scientists (and I have not problem saying this as a scientist myself).
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Oct 19, 2012 15:11
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the_korben posted:I actually think that this is a BIG problem rather than a good thing. There is no reason why science and scientists should not be more involved in public debate and politics, especially where science can provide objective guidelines for legislature. For that to happen, though, you need to have scientists with a political conscience to push for recognition of application of their knowledge. Scientists should be much more involved in politics, even if they shouldn't become partisan. In US, since the current main attitudes to science are "Meh, good i guess" and "Source of all evil and pit of all lies", being partisan would probably be a consequence, but still.
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Oct 19, 2012 15:34
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