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Anosmoman posted:I don't think it's as simple as "the greens did it" though. Things that can be framed as scary science is clearly something that hits a nerve with a lot of people and that has the power to affect public opinion or policy. The anti-vaxxers don't have a multi-billion dollar multinational behind them - on the contrary - but it's still something that has taken hold in some communities. Now many people are wary of nuclear power and the greens have certainly been hitting the scary-science nerve - personally I think it has had an impact in forming public opinion especially over time. Ultimately I suppose the responsibility lies with the government(s) if they don't counter mis-information and makes sure the populace is educated but much like the anti-vax thing it's apparently not a priority. A good comparison is Driving vs Flying: car crashes happen every day, but they get little or no media attention, whereas plane crashes are rare, but when they do happen it's usually catastrophic, and gets quite a bit of attention (or in CNN's case literally never-ending coverage). Even though statistics show it's far safer to fly than to drive, there are still a lot of people who are absolutely terrified of flying but the same time don't think twice about driving. TL;DR humans suck at evaluating riskiness.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:03
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Except that fossil fuel accidents are much more catastrophic than any nuclear incident outside of Chernobyl.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:26
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Rhjamiz posted:What exactly am I looking at? Those pictures are all slightly bigger than 200x200 and not by much! Light pollution viewed from space/hialt, well sites from space/hialt, well sites from the air, before and after from the air, with lots of dirt and standing water in the after. Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 21:35
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down with slavery posted:Except that fossil fuel accidents are much more catastrophic than any nuclear incident outside of Chernobyl. Pretty sure Centralia, PA has been on fire since 1962. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire Only 250 more years!
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Jun 10, 2014 21:36
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down with slavery posted:Except that fossil fuel accidents are much more catastrophic than any nuclear incident outside of Chernobyl. But they are mundane normal industrial accidents nobody ever heard of.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:42
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
fade5 posted:A good comparison is Driving vs Flying This also isn't a really good comparison because the underlying thing here is a sense of control.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:47
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blowfish posted:But they are mundane normal industrial accidents nobody ever heard of. Not really, coal mining disasters happen all the time. It really has nothing to do with riskiness, actually, people just for some reason completely turn their brains off when it comes to nuclear energy. fade5 posted:Part of it is how humans view riskiness. Coal burning is polluting as all hell, but you don't see the immediate, instantaneous effects from that pollution, it takes time for the pollution to cause problems. (Unless you live in a town right next to a coal plant, but in that case you probably need the money/job/industry that the coal plant provides). Nuclear has no day-to-day effects, but the few times it does fail the failures are instant, catastrophic, and memorable, see Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. The fact that the plants functioned for years with few or no problems isn't remembered, but the meltdown is. You'd have a point if Fukishima actually killed people because then it would be the idea of a plane being safer vs a car (one time event vs. the slow killer). But nobody died! Nuclear energy doesn't kill people, unlike quite literally any other form of energy generation. Even without any normalizing, nuclear is safer than solar (or wind or whatever) energy. People are just flat out ignorant when it comes to the issue, I bet a majority of people would be shocked to learn that there's been no deaths and no known effects from the radiation w.r.t Fukishima. blowfish posted:But they are mundane normal industrial accidents nobody ever heard of. Most are, usually. Maybe they don't remember them going forward, but coal mining disasters always make the national news. down with slavery posted:This also isn't a really good comparison because the underlying thing here is a sense of control. More than that, there actually hasn't been a "plane crash" when it comes to nuclear- noone actually dies which is what people should actually care about. enbot fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 21:54
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enbot posted:People are just flat out ignorant when it comes to the issue It's almost as if there's structural issues at play that are distorting the information being passed to consumers. I'm sure those multibillion dollar energy companies that live and die off of the fossil fuel industry have nothing to do with it. Nah, it's probably the non-existent left-wing in America that's to blame.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:56
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Well, sure that is part of it but what do people see when they google about, say, Fukishima? The sources that are talking about nuclear radiated oceans and such are all 'lefties' - I really don't see any propaganda by the corporations- their work is done for them. If it is ultimately the corporations, they are using a natural fear rather than creating it out of thin air. Said another way, I really don't think the nuclear industry could do the same for fossil fuels if they wanted to- people simply don't have the same aversion regardless of the available evidence.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:04
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enbot posted:The sources that are talking about nuclear radiated oceans and such are all 'lefties' http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-japan-disaster-three-years-later-60-minutes/ http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/fukushima-fear-years-tsunami-radiation-leaks-21469743 2014, "leftwing" american news outlets that want to SHOW US HOW BAD THE RADIATION IS
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Jun 10, 2014 22:12
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enbot posted:You'd have a point if Fukishima actually killed people because then it would be the idea of a plane being safer vs a car (one time event vs. the slow killer). But nobody died! Nuclear energy doesn't kill people, unlike quite literally any other form of energy generation.  On your first point, while the numbers are absurdly tiny in comparison, there were 41 deaths at Chernobyl, but using that to attack Nuclear is pretty much a "Wind Turbines Kill Birds"  fearmongering/misdirection. I only mention it because it's easily Googleable, and would then be used as a jumping-off point to either attack all nuclear energy and/or shut down any discussion about it with the average person (which actually happened to me once).enbot posted:Well, sure that is part of it but what do people see when they google about, say, Fukishima? fade5 fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 22:36
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This sort of thing is hard to keep track of for me. Is what Obama has done regarding coal going to actually mean anything, or is it just busywork.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:37
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Anatharon posted:This sort of thing is hard to keep track of for me. Is what Obama has done regarding coal going to actually mean anything, or is it just busywork. Negative Entropy posted:Well what do you want to know? Domestically, this plan isn't that revolutionary and is mainly accelerating the already clear economic trend of the US's switch from coal to gas. This plan is much more important diplomatically because it shows to the world that the US is actually serious about mitigation, and China responded to the new plan by announcing (albeit tepidly and vaguely) that it would introduce carbon caps into its next five-year plan in 2016. It's not the beginning of the end (that will come when the world gets off its gas craze) but it's a step in the right direction. Elotana posted:I'm honestly a lot less worried about gas than coal because the economics of gas extraction are a lot more self-limiting than coal mining, which could basically go on forever absent some form of carbon pricing. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 01:23
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enbot posted:Nuclear energy doesn't kill people, unlike quite literally any other form of energy generation. - Oil: poisoning, oil platforms blowing up - Nat gas: nat gas pipelines blow up and kill people frequently - Coal: respiratory disease, mining collapses explosions etc. - Hydro: uhhh I guess someone could drown in the reservoir lol - Biofuels: pretty sure someone has been blown up with biofuels - Geothermal: yeah i'm sure someone has died falling into a volcano CHALLENGE ROUND: - Solar: electrocuted while wiring an inverter to mainline power what? not specific enough to solar? uhhh ok How about wafer handling fab mishap where a huge sheet of crystalline silicon breaks and then impales an operator  - Wind: has anyone flown a cessna into a turbine??? - Wave: lol
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Jun 11, 2014 05:08
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Hydro damages the environment enough to make up for however many people it (doesn't) kill.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:17
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Mr. Pool posted:- Oil: poisoning, oil platforms blowing up Well, I'm glad you decided to just list whatever inane thoughts came to mind instead of actually researching the issue. Without Hot Air lists deaths per GW, for example, or you could check out other sources (or Google it). Fossil fuels are horrifically deadly, as everyone knows. Hydroelectric dams can catastrophically fail, like the Banqiao Dam did in China in 1976, which killed about 170,000 people. Other accidents can cause injury or death. Dams also disrupt river ecosystems, and are extremely limited--there's only so many rivers you can block up. Solar and wind are indeed many times safer, but still cause occasional deaths. People fall off the wind turbines when doing maintenance on them. Turbines kill birds. People fall off roofs and die when installing solar panels. Nuclear actually beats them in terms of safety, mostly because it's extremely energy dense. Geothermal in the wrong areas can cause earthquakes by lubricating faults. Tidal power can disrupt oceanic ecosystems. There's also opportunity costs to take into account. This isn't a comprehensive lowdown on the issue, just mostly to point out that every kind of energy generation has benefits and drawbacks and you may wish to actually look into them before posting.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:26
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Mr. Pool posted:- Wave: lol
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Jun 11, 2014 05:26
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Mr. Pool posted:- Oil: poisoning, oil platforms blowing up http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2012/06/06/000158349_20120606145531/Rendered/PDF/WPS6078.pdf quote:The study finds that the large-scale expansion of biofuels leads to an increase in production and prices of agricultural commodities. The increased prices would cause higher food prices, especially in developing countries. . . . At the global level, the expansion of biofuels increases poverty slightly. We poo poo on wind and solar a lot but they are going to be viable someday, they're just not quite there yet. Biofuels for the most part are a destructive agribusiness scam whose carbon benefits are highly exaggerated when you count things like land-use changes and whose economic effects harm as much as help. Elotana fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 05:26
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Interesting tidbit: the warming pause is now as long as the lives of incoming high school freshmen. The trend since 2001 is ~0C...it is easy to look at the hiatus yourself with this SkS tool: http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php However, the hiatus may end this year. Many think we will see record-high global temperatures due to an (anticipated, but not guaranteed) strong El Nino event.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:40
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Arkane posted:the warming pause 
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Jun 11, 2014 05:41
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Arkane posted:Interesting tidbit: the warming pause is now as long as the lives of incoming high school freshmen. Uranium Phoenix posted:
Bushmaori posted:I've been lurking this thread for a while, very interesting. I'm just wondering what the deal is exactly with Arkane? He comes in, says something stupid, has it pointed out, doesn't even consider this, disappears and then reappears to remind everyone he is right with another incorrect statement. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. 
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Jun 11, 2014 05:52
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Linking to Skeptical Science is an interesting choice, given that it rebuts this argument right there goddammit
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Jun 11, 2014 06:01
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Linking to Skeptical Science is an interesting choice, given that it rebuts this argument right there goddammit There's no argument, and there's nothing to rebut. It's just numbers and trends. Just type in 2001 as the start year, 2014 as the end year, and go through the temperature data sets. It's right around ~0C (+/- depending on the data set). The Hadley data will be about .05C higher as a decadal trend with Cowtan & Way corrections. There's the hiatus right there, easy as pie to understand and visualize. What point are you trying to make by pasting that? I see they've largely abandoned posting temperature graphs at all in their hiatus page and have instead just shown the .06C increase in temperate in the oceans over the past 60 years. Not a very high opinion of their readership. 2001 is the preferred start date for the hiatus, rather than 1998 due to ENSO fluctuations (2001 is a "cold" La Nina year and 1998 is a "hot" El Nino year).
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Jun 11, 2014 06:17
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Arkane posted:There's no argument, and there's nothing to rebut. It's just numbers and trends. Just type in 2001 as the start year, 2014 as the end year, and go through the temperature data sets. It's right around ~0C (+/- depending on the data set). The Hadley data will be about .05C higher as a decadal trend with Cowtan & Way corrections. There's the hiatus right there, easy as pie to understand and visualize. Or you could look at the entire range of dates.
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Jun 11, 2014 06:37
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Uranium Phoenix posted:Once again, in a surprising turn of events, you're wrong. You're wrong on this. Your first link is from an insurance company who is (smartly?) trying to profit off of a perceived increase and risk. This is straight from the horse's mouth, which your own links cite as well. IPCC, SREX SPM from 2012: quote:There is limited to medium evidence available to assess climate-driven observed changes in the magnitude and English: we don't know whether the frequency of floods are increasing, decreasing, or neither. We do not know whether magnitude is increasing or decreasing or neither. While we're on the topic of extreme weather, there was an article in Nature a couple weeks back about forecasting drought that took a detailed look at drought history: http://www.nature.com/articles/sdata20141 There appears to be a downward trend in the percentage of the globe undergoing the least severe droughts, and no discernible trend in the percent of the globe experiencing the most extreme droughts. We may see changes in flooding & droughts in the future, but we have yet to detect increases. Individual events notwithstanding.
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Jun 11, 2014 06:43
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Arkane posted:What point are you trying to make by pasting that? I see they've largely abandoned posting temperature graphs at all in their hiatus page and have instead just shown the .06C increase in temperate in the oceans over the past 60 years. Not a very high opinion of their readership. 
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Jun 11, 2014 06:45
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Dr. Furious posted:Or you could look at the entire range of dates. Yeah the longer-term trend is around .14C per decade of increases, no doubt. The point of emphasizing the hiatus is that it is apples to apples with the climate models. The 2007 fourth assessment report climate models began in Jan, 2001. Serendipitous. The fifth assessment report climate models from 2013 are little changed from AR4. Temperature is supposed to be accelerating, but instead it is not even increasing over the observation window of the models. This is a decent enough summary, from Nature earlier this year: http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525?wafflebotContextId=1220363993
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Jun 11, 2014 06:50
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Elotana posted:You're looking at the "Basic" tab. You'll need to tab over to "Intermediate" for the harder stuff. Including a certain paper you've failed to understand several times before Not to belabor the point, but if you're talking about Rahmstorf, I think that argument fizzled out with me explaining radiative imbalance. It's not difficult to understand Rahmstorf's methodology...pretty simple. By the same token, it's not difficult to understand either that temperatures should increase dramatically in neutral conditions if your working hypothesis is that La Ninas, solar irradiance, and volcanoes were temporarily masking temperature increases. Radiative imbalance is always increasing. Look at figure 7 on page 6: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf -- MEI is neutral, AOD is neutral, and TSI is positive in the nearly 4 years since their observation period ended (2011, 2012, 2013, and partial 2014). Here's TSI: http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png Absolutely none of those variables are retarding temperature increases, and positive TSI versus the norm should have an ever so slight warming effect. You cannot explain away the hiatus with this methodology, especially since it will not produce the hypothesized result if you extended his graph to 2014.
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Jun 11, 2014 07:32
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Uranium Phoenix posted:All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. Goddamnit that's the wrong smiley. :lexx: needs to become a thing  computer parts posted:Hydro damages the environment enough to make up for however many people it (doesn't) kill. Especially since most of the already-hosed up rivers are damned up, meaning it's becoming hard to find places to put hydro that are not ecologically valuable.
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Jun 11, 2014 07:54
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Elotana posted:We poo poo on wind and solar a lot but they are going to be viable someday, they're just not quite there yet. On solar, we're just about there for the sun belt regions. I just got a solar PV system for my house that goes up in 6 weeks. I'm getting 30% of the cost back in a tax rebate or I'd never have done it, but the system is priced at only $3 per watt even without the rebate. And PVs are getting more efficient by the year. We'll probably have cost-effective solar power, without subsidy considerations, in the sun belt in 5-10 years.
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Jun 11, 2014 08:06
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Arkane posted:On solar, we're just about there for the sun belt regions. I just got a solar PV system for my house that goes up in 6 weeks. I'm getting 30% of the cost back in a tax rebate or I'd never have done it, but the system is priced at only $3 per watt even without the rebate. And PVs are getting more efficient by the year. We'll probably have cost-effective solar power, without subsidy considerations, in the sun belt in 5-10 years. They need to get cheaper again because of storage concerns.
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Jun 11, 2014 09:04
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Since climate change is real and unavoidable at this point, I foresee that it's going to be a big PR nightmare for the Republicans and every current denier once climate change becomes too obvious for any of them to deny it (I don't know what it's going to take, short of Lower Manhattan getting swallowed by the sea). It makes me wonder how these guys will deal with their credibility nightmare once the backlash starts. I think some of them might try to blame the scientists. They could say "Oh back then the consensus was weak and I was only relaying the doubts of the scientists I consulted with. It's their fault for presenting such shaky evidence." I guess that could mean every current skeptic among the scientific community will become a scapegoat. Some might try to say that they had already changed their minds on climate change, and dismiss all the embarrassing quotes and video clips that they will be confronted with. They might say something like "Those skeptical words I said are ancient history. back when there was still reasonable doubt. I totally changed my mind since then, and for years now I've been saying that climate change is real." Some will throw their backs into climate change activism, saying "Look! I'm one of the good guys now! I'm totally working on solutions." Maybe they will rebuke critics for wasting time. "There's no use in petty finger-pointing, let's instead work on solutions!"
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Jun 11, 2014 10:14
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Baron Bifford posted:Since climate change is real and unavoidable at this point, I foresee that it's going to be a big PR nightmare for the Republicans and every current denier once climate change becomes too obvious for any of them to deny it (I don't know what it's going to take, short of Lower Manhattan getting swallowed by the sea). It makes me wonder how these guys will deal with their credibility nightmare once the backlash starts. They'll lie. They will say that 2 + 2 = 5 and people will believe them.
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Jun 11, 2014 10:21
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Yeah, and I'm trying to predict their excuses. Is there some sort of historical precedent we can use? Was there ever before some big issue where there was widespread ridicule of a danger scientists kept warning about?
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Jun 11, 2014 10:24
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Baron Bifford posted:Yeah, and I'm trying to predict their excuses. Lead? Cigarettes? Basically, equivocate, lie, and misdirect. And never, ever, ever admit you're wrong. When in doubt, make poo poo up about the people calling out your bullshit. Poison the well with lovely "research" that's difficult for layman to separate from legitimate science. You'd think after a century of demonstrating that prolonging this sort of poo poo inevitably leads to longer and more costly solutions and penalties in the end the script would change. Dick Milhous Rock! fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 10:28
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Climate change is way bigger than any of that and denialism is almost a religion. It's not just corporations; there are lots of politicians, preachers, and media pundits who have reputations on the line. This is something I read off National Geogrpahic: quote:Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London. It looks like the seas swallowing the coasts is a long way off. Most of the denialists of today will probably be retired or dead by the time the backlash starts. Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 11:04
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Baron Bifford posted:Yeah, and I'm trying to predict their excuses. It's not directly comparable, but your point reminds me of an article someone posted awhile back showing the % of people in their 20s-40s who actually supported the civil rights act in 1964, versus the % of people in their 70s-90s who now claim that they supported it. I wish I could find it. Suffice it to say that most of your denialist friends, acquaintances, and relatives will have "forgotten" what their position was by the time they're 70. Politicians will forget even quicker.
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Jun 11, 2014 11:56
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Haha. I swear I once heard my mother call gays "unnatural" and "sick" some years ago. Now she's a firm supporter of gay marriage. She is getting senile. It will be a different story for politicians and other high-profile figures who've gone on record denying climate change. Every joke that Ted Cruz has publicly made at Al Gore's expense is preserved for eternity on YouTube and can be brought back to haunt him. Baron Bifford fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 12:41
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Baron Bifford posted:Haha. I swear I once heard my mother call gays "unnatural" and "sick" some years ago. Now she's a firm supporter of gay marriage. She is getting senile. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 13:27
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Negative Entropy posted:Why do you think they care? People like Ted Cruz have no shame and don't really care who get run over as long as they're making money. When the effects of climate change start to hit society in full force, the denialists can go hide in the comfortable life they've made for themselves off shilling. What is anyone going to do about it? Post angrily to internet forums
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Jun 11, 2014 15:01
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