Talking To the Public: the Biggest Enemy To Reducing Greenhouse Emissions 324
Lasrick writes: "Lucien Crowder is fed up with the notion that solutions for climate change would be easier to enact if only the public (especially the American public) understood the science better. Crowder looks to nuclear disarmament advocates as a model, as the move to reduce nuclear weapons has seen comparatively greater success even without public awareness and understanding: 'Indeed, in the nuclear and climate realms, desirable policy often seems to flow less from public engagement than from public obliviousness. Disarmament advocates, no matter how they try, cannot tempt most ordinary people into caring about nuclear weapons—yet stockpiles of weapons steadily, if still too slowly, decrease. Climate advocacy provokes greater passion, but passion often manifests itself as outraged opposition to climate action, and atmospheric carbon has reached levels unseen since before human beings evolved.'"
Apples, Oranges and Herrings (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that's a very good comparison. Nuclear disarmament is not perceived as effecting people in their daily lives. That's why most average people can't be arsed to give a care.
In order to enact meaningful carbon reduction legislation things have to change for everyone. Things will get more expensive or need to be rationed. People will feel put upon by these regulations. They will be effected by whatever steps are taken.
Note, I don't really want to carry on a debate about it but I do believe in man made climate change and wish my country would do more to be a meaningful part of a solution. My statement above is just my opinion on why there is such a backlash against by the public in the USA.
Nuclear Disarmament didn't cause... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. heating bills to go up.
2. My cooling bills to go up.
3. My gasoline cost to go up.
4. My food cost to go up due to all the above costs for the food producers to go up.
5. Local brownouts due to power plants being taken off line.
Re:Nuclear Disarmament didn't cause... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm not sure that's a very good comparison. Nuclear disarmament is not perceived as effecting people in their daily lives.
Well, that and the whole Glasnost/collapse thing the USSR experienced removed the main impetus for stockpiling nukes in the first place...
Re:Apples, Oranges and Herrings (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there's a bit of similarity (though it's still not a perfect analogy) along one particular axis: a large portion of the public, in both cases, believes that not much is going to happen on a global scale anyway, so why take unilateral action. Sure, a world with no nuclear weapons might be great, but it'll never happen, so better keep our own. Similarly, sure, a world without runaway greenhouse gas emissions might be great, but China isn't going to stop and within a few decades will burn so much coal it'll swamp anything we do, so why unilaterally handicap our own industry when it won't matter?
That's somewhat different from visible, localized pollution like smog, where people see a differential benefit: if we clean up our particulate emissions and China doesn't, we get cities with cleaner air and they get gross haze, which we can then feel good about as a sign of our greater level of advancement and quality of life. But emitting less CO2 doesn't really give your local area a pollution advantage, because it's not a localized kind of pollution.
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The "public" is conditioned, from birth, to defer to the established authority and prefers to live the submissive life with no obligations. Nobody is going to rock the boat until they miss a meal or two... or Facebook gets shut down.
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The "public" is conditioned
Wow, that makes you sound far better than the average sheeple out there. I mean, you couldn't possibly be being lead around by the nose. Said every ideologue in all of history.
Deference to authority *and* paranoia have strong biological bases. So is thinking we're better than others. It's amazing how much of ourselves we reveal in just a few words.
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The thing is, you're not affected by nuclear weapons until you're on the receiving end and once you are, you won't have much time to care about it.
Nuclear disarmament hasn't happened. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure that's a very good comparison. Nuclear disarmament is not perceived as effecting people in their daily lives.
More to the point, nuclear disarmament hasn't happened.
There has been some shift in the composition of the nuclear forces, but that's primarily due to changes in the expected way that a war would proceed and thus the planned utilization of nuclear weapons, not due to disarmament.
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In order to enact meaningful carbon reduction legislation things have to change for everyone.
That's not really true. There will be big changes for the coal/oil industry, but most people wouldn't notice the difference of a transition to a low carbon economy. The notion that there will be huge changes and destructive regulations is just a tired little canard that gets pulled out by every industry that is facing down government interference. Remember, regulating CFCs and SO2 was also supposed to *ruin* the economy. The US government could not build one aircraft carrier to pay for the needed infrastru
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Actually, it's an even worse comparison than that. Not only does it not disrupt major industries that employee large numbers of people and, more importantly, keep a large number of wealthy people wealthy but the nuclear disarmament process has provided a source of plentiful, already mostly processed, fuel for the nuclear power industry. For a while now, many US nuclear plants have been running off of fuel sold to them by the Russians and gotten from dismantled nuclear weapons stocks (though, last I heard
Re:Apples, Oranges and Herrings & Asia (Score:2)
Sean would "wish my country would do more to be a meaningful part of a solution." Easy! Persuade Asia to stop building coal power plants & stop burning wood for cooking and heating.
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OK, got it.
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Well, I don't "believe" in man made climate change either but I accept that the scientists who are studying it know what they're talking about. I guess what I believe in is the scientific method and it's proven worthy of that belief.
Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Hippies always start with education. But it never takes long for them to turn to laws and court cases to force their point of view on the rest of us. That's why "Let's work together to conserve water!" turned from voluntary to the point where I can't leagally buy a shower-head that doesn't have the power of warm snot.
Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:5, Informative)
to the point where I can't leagally buy a shower-head that doesn't have the power of warm snot.
Two seconds and a small screwdriver to pop out that stupid flow restrictor works wonders. Five minutes and a drill handles anything tougher to remove.
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Two seconds and a small screwdriver to pop out that stupid flow restrictor works wonders. Five minutes and a drill handles anything tougher to remove.
You will take a hit on your water and heating bills.
Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:4, Informative)
You will take a hit on your water and heating bills.
Not necessarily - greater flow means a faster shower; instead of having to stay in longer while waiting for that slow flow to get everything wet, then wait for it to wash off the soap, I can cut shower times down to a mere fraction of what they would otherwise take. Then you have the fact that with a restricted flow, a huge percentage of the heat in your hot water is radiating out into your walls while it sits there waiting its turn to go out the shower head (few houses insulate hot water pipes all the way from heater to bathroom, so...) Finally, you don't have to wait as long for the shower water to heat up in the first place, so you can get right in without waiting.
To be honest, I haven't seen hardly any an increase in water or heating costs since I did it, and it saves me a bit of time.
Also, there are folks living in areas where water flow is kind of sluggish in the first place - why should they have to suffer even more?
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I had the same problem but then about a year ago I replaced the cheap toilet in my home with one that came highly recommended by Consumer Reports. It's a 1.3 gallon/flush model and it hasn't plugged once or even had any leftovers. IOW, if the toilet is properly designed the multiple flushes aren't required.
Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:5, Insightful)
That was just one example. here are a couple more.
1. The ban on most incandescent bulbs.
2. The attempted ban on extra large soft drinks in NY.
3. The ban on plastic grocery bags in many jurisdictions.
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Well, here's your clandestine workaround then.
Go take a hike, and start killing any and all plants and animals you see by any means necessary. Accomplishes the same thing, and works around those pesky civilized rules.
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I think you got your units mixed up: warm snot is a measure of temperature (can also be used as a measure of texture), not a measure of power.
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Those old hippies are pretty astute. They're selling the "ecologically friendly" plumbing that's being mandated. It's kind of an old trick, widely practiced by the insurance industry.
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Yes, climate regulations will have to be forced, against large and extremely well funded resistance. It won't work, quite frankly. Not because of people like you who don't want to pay 10% more on their heating and cooling bill, but because of people like the Koch brothers who will happily spend tens of millions of dollars to protect their interests.
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Yes, climate regulations will have to be forced, against large and extremely well funded resistance. It won't work, quite frankly. Not because of people like you who don't want to pay 10% more on their heating and cooling bill, but because of people like the Koch brothers who will happily spend tens of millions of dollars to protect their interests.
Exactly - that's why we get things like laws requiring individual citizens to install low-flow shower heads (which, in the big scheme of things, is a trivial change), but the EPA can't force large manufacturing firms to curb their water usage or limit how much they're allowed to pollute.
Then, of course, there's the whole China issue to take into account. The EPA is a bureaucratic powerhouse compared to whatever toothless, token version exists over there.
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That's because education doesn't do any good when people don't give a damn.
Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah pretty much.
The trouble, of course, isn't that people are too stupid or too obstinate to understand, it's that the case being made it setting off BS alarms everywhere. Global warming is a hard sell when Al Gore is guzzling gas flying around the world to talk about how bad it is and how people need to cut back. Anyone is going to look at that and see "cutting back" as what the poor need to do to sustain the lifestyles of the rich, and 'carbon credits' as the excuse. People know that nuclear power doesn't emit CO2, but the fact that it isn't being pursued as a solution indicates that global warming isn't as scary as nuclear power. And rather than reuse-reuse-recycle programs, we get consume-more programs like cash for clunkers and cell phone kill switches.
The problem isn't with communication, it's about leadership. Show people that you're concerned, and maybe they'll start to believe you. Or don't and just fuck them over... it's a nice win-win for those in charge.
Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm enjoying the fact it went over the rednecks heads.
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Ah, but you can see a long way.
Not if your head is in the clouds.
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Haha, I think it was a joke =0. All my politics steams from a scientific epistemology,
On that note, do you think that an abortion, especially during the late term, is killing a human being?
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... you'd put down your favorite media, and educate yourself...
Those who rely exclusively on themselves for education have an idiot for a pupil and a fool for an instructor.
I find it amusing that you go out of your way to demonize a single political party, when fact is that both major parties in the US are happily raking the public over the coals - often for the same lusts: money and power. I find it doubly amusing that for someone who supposedly thinks for himself and is allegedly self-educated on the topic, I find that in other posts you seem to parrot soundbites, a
Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes.
I had occasion to go to a NASCAR event, and I was surrounded by lots of poor white people (and a smattering of other types) with bad body odor. I wasn't sure if it was just a bad day, and so I went again the next year. Still didn't enjoy it, still hated the smell of 100,000 people who were in the summer sun too long, burning rubber, and fuel exhaust. But I have to admit, there is something enjoyable about the roar of the engines on that first full speed lap, and the tension of the pit stops.
As it turns out, actually going to this stuff, which isn't what I'd normally do, was kind of an interesting experience, and exposed me to seeing some things and some people I wouldn't normally experience. And I kinda feel like that's well beyond the kind of "tolerance" and "openness to diversity" that people who use the term "redneck" in a purely pejorative sense can ever show.
If that's what you mean by empathy, I agree.
So-called "rednecks" often have much less screwed up ideas about things like personal finance, conservancy, food sources, and so on than the college-educated folks who consider themselves superior.
Funny.
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How about left-liberal people who believe themselves to be tolerant using skin-color-based slurs?
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When logic and reason and decades of actual science fail to work against people who are impervious, then what?
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You can do what Michael Mann did and create bogus graphs to hide historical facts.
Love the idea, hate the ideologues (Score:5, Insightful)
What TFA seems to fail at pointing out was that nuclear disarmament isn't happening because of anything the activists or advocates did - it's happening because one of the main cold-war aggressors was forced to give up. When the USSR collapsed, the biggest reason that the US and (let's be honest) China were stockpiling nukes was, well, gone - almost overnight. Without that reason, disarmament could get underway in earnest.
Same story here: until something happens that makes the public at large want to do something about pollution, you're not going to get them to stop polluting as much. In this case, the ideologues aren't going to accomplish jack - like the activists of the 1970's and 1980's, all they'll manage to do is polarize and piss-off the folks whose minds they want to have changed.
Instead, if you want a real solution, how about making a cleaner lifestyle a preferred one? Make green tech cheaper over time, and make it easier to use than the old polluting stuff (and no, not by simply levying a "carbon tax" on the existing stuff, either.) Make the preferred stuff more durable.
For example, look at Germany - they put in some damned nice tax breaks for alternative energies, big enough (and personal enough) for Germans to shingle nearly every damned building and outhouse in the nation with solar panels, and for companies to erect wind farms wherever they could. Make biofuels cheaper than regular gasoline by not charging a federal excise tax on it (and get the states to do the same), and I bet the stuff would suddenly get competitive. Sweeten the deal on alternative fuels a bit by cutting (or eliminating) road use taxes on all vehicles fitted to use only natural gas, electricity, or suchlike.
The idea is to not prohibit, but to entice. To remove the reasons why someone would want to stick with the old, bad ways. If you can do that, you can get somewhere, but I sincerely doubt that activists are going to blaze that trail...
Re:Love the idea, hate the ideologues (Score:4, Insightful)
but I sincerely doubt that activists are going to blaze that trail...
Activists not only want that, it's happening. There are many tax incentives for green tech. But it's hard won as the old entrenched corporate powers that use lobbying to oppose it.
e.g. the Koch brothers funding the organisation that recently removed the incentive for solar electricity generation in one state.
Re:Love the idea, hate the ideologues (Score:4, Insightful)
but I sincerely doubt that activists are going to blaze that trail...
Activists not only want that, it's happening. There are many tax incentives for green tech.
How do you figure the government taking my money and giving it to someone else to buy a car I can't afford is trail-blazing by activists?
Re:Love the idea, hate the ideologues (Score:5, Insightful)
3 times the electricity cost of the US, INCREASING CO2 emissions with the nuclear slowdown. Grid stability becoming a big problem. Expected increasing costs due to lack of revenues from nuclear tax. That doesn't even take in to account the costs they will start incurring in the next decade to replace/maintain aging wind and solar assets.
Spending a huge amount of money on a marginally effective and expensive solution doesn't equate to success, although it may appear that way to those who just see the panels and turbines and think all is wonderful.
Re:Love the idea, hate the ideologues (Score:5, Insightful)
If greenhouse gases emissions were actually taxed, then they wouldn't do that.
Of course there are unscientific 'environmentalists' whose emotional reactions to nuclear power (less safe and clean than solar, more safe and clean than coal) and unwillingness to look at quantitative facts lead them to bad outcomes. Just as climate deniers do.
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Nuclear is not "less safe and clean than solar". Safety at modern nukes (when well-regulated) is top-notch, and a small amonut of manageable nuclear waste hardly qualifies as "dirty" - no dirtier than the byproducts of making solar panels.
apply tags (Score:3)
Nuclear is safer than any other form of energy production.
It's safer than hydro, and significantly safer than wind and solar - and several orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels.
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3 times the electricity cost is actually pretty cheap compared to one's water-bill, or what one spends on gasoline, on average, and what we'll all be spending on electricity for running AC 24/7 everywhere when global warming really starts to kick in. (not to mention all the hundreds of millions of people who will have to relocate, and the hundreds of millions who will starve to death when we can't grow or distribute food anymore)
How much is a livable planet worth, anyway?
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How much would electricity cost in the USA without energy subsidies and with the negative externalities corrected?
Because they haven't yet embraced smart meters.
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Nowhere near 3 times. Some argue a naturalized cost approach would result in lower costs. I don't necessarily believe that either.
Because they haven't yet embraced smart meters.
A clear misunderstanding of what smart meters are capable of, as well as the fundamentals of grid stability and management. If you want folk's power cutting off at the whim of outside forces, or time based pricing, then there are easier and less costly ways to accomplish that. Even with some of that happening, you can't easily compensate for the huge swings of solar and unpredict
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A clear misunderstanding of what smart meters are capable of. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) allows prices to vary with current market conditions (supply and demand), not just the time of day, and allows thermostats and smart devices to be controlled by demand response events.
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Industrial and large commercial customer's needs are a signific
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For example, look at Germany...
Germany does put high taxes on energy in order to subsidize green energy production and projects.
They don't just hand out taxes breaks, they also raises taxes on fossil fuel...
Taxes is a tool to be used here.. The US is using it, but not enough, and the US probably doesn't have the will/strength/ability to do because of all the money involved in politics and big corporations lobby against it...
Bad analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
Drawing down strategic weapons is a part of the "peace dividend" in the public mind. What "dividend" is the public supposed to believe will appear by making energy into an expensive luxury? This analogy is just bogus.
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Environmentalist narcissism dividend. Plus extremely rich people like Al Gore get to profit by selling you carbon credits and other stuff you don't want but will be forced to buy.
How are you spending your cut of the peace dividend, BTW? I'm pretty sure my peace dividend check got lost in the mail.
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Can someone mention Al Gore one more time? My denier Bingo card is almost filled out.
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Hockey stick.
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BINGO!
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Having a future for their children?
Pointless comparison ..... (Score:2)
Nobody I know has a regular use for nuclear warheads. The military purchased all of those with the government's stamp of approval, while the public was only told "It's for your safety and security, because we've got to match what the other countries are doing so we're not at a disadvantage!" GIven that, of COURSE the disarmament process would ALSO be something the military and the government would undertake without the public getting very involved (or given much detailed information about it).
Asking people
Re:Pointless comparison ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
I, too, am willing to accept that man-made climate change is actually happening. That doesn't mean I won't remain a skeptic when it comes to government or private industries with agendas telling me I need to pay more money for their "solutions" to the problem.
The Republican 9 step plan to Global Warming Denial.
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
8) ????
9) Profit.
I welcome the progression of at least accepting anthropogenic global warming is real.
Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
1) We have care overload. I have to care about global warming, and nuclear proliferation, and school shootings, and AIDS, and breast cancer awareness, and domestic spying, and and and... It's hard to get people to care about thing A when they're exhausted from being told to care about things B-Z.
2) There is very little an individual can do about climate change. I was at Disney's Animal Kingdom once and they had a display about conserving energy and bullshit and I thought I was taking crazy pills. This park wastes more energy in a day than I could in a hundred lifetimes, and they're lecturing me? As if I'm the problem?
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I'm having a hard time seeing if it crosses right-over-left, or left-over-right.
Nuclear comparison... (Score:3)
Actually isn't it the exact opposite? Nuclear disarmament happens because no one anywhere wants anything to do with nuclear anything if it's in their personal backyard. So there's no place to even store the weapons, waste, processing plants, or anything else, that doesn't make it a political storm. We're gaining nuclear disarmament mostly for the same reason we can't gain new modern nuclear power. The public simply freaks out about the word, not because there's any real logic applied.
The problem with greenhouse emissions, is the word greenhouse just doesn't inspire any fear.
The market controls the world (Score:2)
Nuclear disarmament is hardly the result of hard work of advocates.
Instead it is the work of improvements in delivery/targeting technology, ongoing cost of stockpile maintenance nobody wants to bear and unnecessary risk of weapons getting into the wrong hands. There simply is no point in anyone stockpiling such absurd numbers of nukes anymore... resulting stockpile reduction agreements were predictable no-brainers.
Likewise if you want to move the needle WRT climate change you need to deliver alternatives w
We Understand But ... (Score:2)
Yay! a climate change thread (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, this is going to be full of people saying climate change isn't real. They'll be saying that it's all a hoax by 99% of the world's scientists, or they're in cahoots, or they just want that sweet sweet grant money..... Then there are the folks who will say that those of us that respect scientists and science in general are just drinking the kool-aid.
To them, I give this link. http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/02/... [whowhatwhy.com]
On top of that, you can see the stupid data yourself with a few seconds work. Here. I'll give you that too. http://www.wolframalpha.com/in... [wolframalpha.com]
You can quite clearly see a rise in temp that started around the 1900s(almost looks like ... some sort of.... hockey stick....). You can quite clearly see which data is from historical data, which is from readings from instruments, and which is reconstructed from tree rings and the like.
I wonder what happened right around that time that was so different from all of our history before that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org] There's even a lag time for a hysteresis effect, which one would expect.
In ending, I will paraphrase Dawkins when speaking of how EASY it would be to disprove evolution. All you have to do is find ONE modern fossil in the wrong era. Just one. One duck fossil next to a T-rex fossil would throw doubt on the whole thing. Just one. And it's never been found. It's EASY to disprove evolution. It's never been done, because it's right. Same thing here. Just show that tree ring growth doesn't correspond to temperature, and the entire thing goes out the window. Just show that C02 isn't a greenhouse gas. Just show that the global mean temperatures are NOT rising. Bring your data. It's so EASY to disprove, and you have nothing but FUD.
That is all.
Remind me when "I" gave up nuclear weapons (Score:3)
Because my understanding was that the public never had them in the first place.
So in what way are the two situations at all similar?
They aren't.
In the one case you have nuclear weapons in government nuclear stockpiles and silos. And in the other case you have everyone with a car in their garage. They're not remotely similar.
But you know what... if the end result is they bitch about global warming less, then I'm all for it. That is one if the biggest mcguffins of the last 100 years.
Money (Score:3)
from just this summary (Score:3)
No, that's stupid. (Score:2)
Averting the consequences of climate change require people en mass to change their behaviors. No such change in behavior is required for Nuclear disarmament.
Plus many large wealthy company will have to be satisfied making slightly less money, they aren't thrilled about that.
Also some Jobs may be lost as a result of those diminished profits.
All of the nuclear weapon creation jobs are long gone. All the work around them is related to maintenance and dismantling them. Some people are benefiting from the disman
Not the same... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nuclear disarmament vs. greenhouse gas reduction is a poor comparison.
How much did nuclear disarmament affect the day-to-day lives of the average person? Zilch. Zero. Nada. 50 nuclear missiles sitting in some empty part of the country vs. 200 nuclear missiles sitting in some silos in some empty part of the country affects people not at all (unless there is a nuclear war, but were all screwed anyways).
Greenhouse gas reduction involves changing things in peoples day-to-day lives. How much is, of course, up for debate, but the perception is that we will have to sacrifice some of our standard of living to accomplish this.
Nuclear Disarmament spokesperson: "We are going to have fewer nuclear missiles in our subs. What do you think about that?"
Joe Blow: "Uhhhhh, OK...."
Greenhouse Gas Reduction spokesperson: "We are going to slap a tax on the fuels you use, so now you will get to pay more at the pump. What do you think about that?"
Joe Blow: [punches Greenhouse Gas Reduction spokesperson in the face]
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Shorter AC: I don't like the science or its implications, so I'll attack the man instead and thus derail the discussion. At least it's not yet another anti-Al Gore screed.
Re:Hairy Reed - Gas Producer (Score:5, Insightful)
well, when deniers talk the science, the believers go into "burn the heretics at the stake" mode. it's hard to have an honest debate with people who have drank the kool-aid. so, when dealing with cults/religions i think it's valid to point out the hypocrisy of the cults leaders. it's also important to show why they want you to believe what they're selling. it's probably not for the greater good, it's most likely to gain more control and power.
it's always about control and power.
this heretic is ready, mod me down.
Re:Hairy Reed - Gas Producer (Score:4, Insightful)
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| well, when deniers talk the science, the believers go into "burn the heretics at the stake" mode.
When deniers lie about the science, the believers in science go into "you are an ignorant idiot and ought to STFU and everybody should ignore your drivel" mode, as they ought to, because the future of technological civilization may be at risk from aggravated ignorance.
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well, when deniers talk the science, the believers go into "burn the heretics at the stake" mode. it's hard to have an honest debate with people who have drank the kool-aid.
I read Science and New Scientist. I don't have any problem getting the facts.
The New Scientist once did a story about the respectable scientists with good credentials who didn't believe the standard version of global warming. The arguments were fairly technical and the New Scientist gave them a good hearing. Since that time a few of them were finally convinced of global warming.
Maybe you're reading the wrong magazines.
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Speaking of elite lying Democrats, How Did Harry Reid Get Rich?
Oh, same way the Republicans got rich.
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Cite?
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At least www.bing.com has a nice background photo of Ned Ryerson.
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I agree.
Methane is far far FAR more dangerous than CO2.
Natural systems on the earth do not use it much, and it can accumulate quickly. Essentially the only way to get rid of it is through ignition, very bad, or photolitic processes that break it down via sunlight.
CO2 input in our Biosphere is much less of a problem due to the large numbers of ways CO2 can be consumed, and it is often consumed very quickly and by a wide variety of sources, unlike methane.
One of the reasons why CO2 is not a big deal to me, is
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Pardon me, but the ideology of "Anthropogenic CO2-caused Global Warming" is not based on the "insulation" properties of CO2. Instead it is based on a physics-challenged notion of "trapping radiation", which is not how thermal insulation works.
Pardon me, but the ideology of deniers is based on trying to debate things they know nothing about.
Next, let's debate whether gravity exists or it is actually electric! Why isn't this revelation taught from the rooftops? Where is the balance in the discussion?
http://www.holoscience.com/wp/... [holoscience.com]
http://blackholeformulas.com/f... [blackholeformulas.com]
http://arxiv.org/html/physics/... [arxiv.org]
PS. Yes, I'm sarcastic.
Re:Estimates 1000x off on fracking methane (Score:4, Funny)
Science, how does it work?
With fucking magnets, that's how.
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Well if the magnets are doing that, they can't be doing science.
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It's a study in berth control.
http://magneticislandmarina.co... [magneticis...ina.com.au]
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Science, how does it work?
With fucking magnets, that's how.
You forgot "bitch!" at the end of that. Bitch!
Just ask Jesse Pinkman
Re:Estimates 1000x off on fracking methane (Score:5, Informative)
The actual physics of Anthropogenic Global Warming (of which anthropogenic CO2 is one but not an exclusive component, and no scare quotes needed as it is fact) is based upon the infrared emissivity of gases and their actual dynamics and concentration in the atmosphere.
This physics is lab validated and confirmed by in-situ objective measurements.
Analogies made to the lay public are imprecise, but the underlying science never was.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I stated nothing but the simple truth. If you disagree, you disagree, but that does not "troll" make.
Re: (Score:2)
Pardon me, but the ideology of "Anthropogenic CO2-caused Global Warming" is not based on the "insulation" properties of CO2. Instead it is based on a physics-challenged notion of "trapping radiation", which is not how thermal insulation works.
I should also point out that sucking really isn't sucking. Air is not being "sucked" instead the creation of a vacuum causes surrounding air to expand out filling the pressure gradient.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
This is the fundamental problem that occurs when people who speak of warming (like Dr. Roy Spencer) compare CO2 to "insulation": thermal insulation actually works on a completely different principle than the claimed "greenhouse effect".
The idea of "the greenhouse effect" is based on the concept of trapping outgoing radiation. And this is where a lot of confusion occurs, because that's not how actual greenhouses work.
A real greenhouse work this way: sunlight enters and warms things inside
Re: (Score:2)
Surface temperatures (Score:4, Informative)
Venus average surface temperature is 735 Kelvin.
Earth surface temperature is about 287 Kelvin.
Remember that outgoing heat flux is in fourth power of absolute temperature, so ignoring atmospheres (black body) Venus would be emitting 43 times as much heat and so would have to be that much closer.
You can't separate the pressure from the temperature and the actual heat flux and hypothetically imagine a '1 atm' pressure on Venus. With a similar atmosphere as Earth you'd have roughly a surface temperature T so that (T/287)^4 = 1.911, difference in solar insolation.
That Venus thang . . . (Score:3)
Owing to its composition of greenhouse gases, the atmosphere at sea level pressure is mostly opaque to infrared, and heat is transmitted through the air largely through circulation and convection, accounting for weather. The "radiative thermosphere", that altitude where the air temperature is determined by radiative equilibrium with space, occurs when the air gets thin enough. That altitude is a little bit below the "flight levels"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They tried the direct approach, lying through people like Al Gore, and then got caught cooking the evidence. Now it's time to end the direct propaganda war
Ahem. You're the one engaged in a propaganda war.
Re:So it's now time lie and cheat? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how people who are so obviously full of !@#$ always end their posts by claiming that they're going to be persecuted/modded down, as if the INSERT CONSPIRACY extends all the way down to Slashdot posts.
Maybe people are just sick of listening to the crazy guy in the corner? No. That couldn't be. I'm sure YOU'RE the victim here.