Slashdot Mirror
Finding Fault With Anti-Fracking Science Claims
A widely carried Associated Press article (here, as run by the Wall Street Journal) reports that some of the convincingly scientific-sounding claims of opponents of fracking don't seem to hold up to scrutiny. That's not to say that all is peaches: the article notes, for instance, that much of the naturally radioactive deep water called flowback forced up along with fracking-extracted gas "was once being discharged into municipal sewage treatment plants and then rivers in Pennsylvania," leading to concern about pollution of public water supplies. Public scrutiny and regulation mean that's no longer true. But specific claims about cancer rates, and broader ones about air pollution or other ills, are not as objective as they might appear to be, according to Duke professor Avner Vengosh and others. An excerpt: "One expert said there's an actual psychological process at work that sometimes blinds people to science, on the fracking debate and many others. 'You can literally put facts in front of people, and they will just ignore them,' said Mark Lubell, the director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior at the University of California, Davis. Lubell said the situation, which happens on both sides of a debate, is called 'motivated reasoning.' Rational people insist on believing things that aren't true, in part because of feedback from other people who share their views, he said."
Dictates that whatever the oil industry want's to do, its probably wrong.
I see what you did there...
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
I've always just called it "confirmation bias." I see it just as much in the left wing as the right, and nearly every other area of human interaction. Why should sciences be exempt?
we're screwed
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When some of us question the shaky science of AGW we are called anti-science, 'deniers' and worse. Hell, semi reputable idiots on the AGW team actually say we should be outlawed or otherwised silenced. I await with breathless anticipation the sudden 180, where dissent is again patiotic... and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
Why not lets meet in the middle and admit what my team has been saying for a long time, that science, being a human endeavor, has been politicized. Then we can all agree that every idiot in a lab coat (or worse, a politican who wears one on TV) shouldn't be blindly trusted. That science, and more importantly the ways of science, are important tools to knowledge but that scientists should only be allowed to inform policy decision, never to use argument from authority to impose policy.
Democrat delenda est
would it be more fair to say that rational people insist on more rigorous tests or larger data sets before walking away? when third-party evidence is counter-intuitive, we have a right to be cautious or suspicious.
if there are many scientists - or even if there are only a few good scientists - who have doubts, then why shouldn't a non-expert?
When grant money is on the line science will reflect whatever is required to ensure continued financial support.
Got Code?
Whether fracking is scientifically sound or not, we have just got to stop this desperate scrabbling to dig up any scrap of fossil fuel we can find.
The world is acting like an addict that will do anything to get their next fix, no matter how damaging it could be, or what the consequences could be that we just don't care to think about. I'm no treehugger but even I think this is like raiding grandma's handbag to give to "my man" and it's embarrassing, undignified and immoral.
The first step to recovery is to admit the problem. We're still in denial.
Some "Scientists" insist on presenting as "facts" things which are not necessarily true. As long as scientific studies are being produced with a pronounced bias towards a particular viewpoint, I think people will tend to disbelieve scientific studies that disagree with the view that they hold. When Corporations can pay for studies that "prove" their viewpoint but appear to be unbiased why should we believe everything we are told just because a scientist says its so. If they remain neutral then they gain credibility but the more biased opinions that get passed off as "scientific fact" the weaker their credibility. I am thinking here of some of the studies done with the financing of Big Pharma that just happen to support a product they are selling/developing, and then later we discover it was all a sham.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
hmm, yes. it's clear that tap water catching on fire is psychological.
I'll never understand slashdot's psychotic devotion to being anti-earth. Is it just a logical extension of technological fetishism? Like, poisoning the environment is okay because your discarded hardware poisons the environment?
fuck you, got mine?
The sad thing in this whole saga is that we can actually source a large amount of our demand for natural gas from our own waste using technology which has been known for centuries. Instead, we simply choose to landfill our waste. What a waste.
We actually have the technology today to source almost all our needs for natural gas in environmentally sound ways. That there are crazy subsidies on continuing the status quo means that the environment loses.
The best thing that any government can do for the environment is to eliminate all subsidies.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
geesss you really need scientists to tell us this
Of course the same psychological process may be at work in those who deny the dangers of fracking. Of course, everyone has always known that bias effects how we process facts and arrive at conclusions.
It's called the Confirmation bias.
force the executives to live on that land, breathe that air, and drink that water for the entire time they are fracking it. No bottled water, or filters either. If there are no dangers, then they should do it willingly. My bet is they won't.
Cue the zealots claiming that this is why people disagree with them because this is an easy way to categorize people as "different" and "blind" so that they can be considered "other" than the group and therefore minimized, ignored and mistreated. Instead of recognizing that all people have views for reasons
Its easy to pass off all the examples of polluted water and air is all. "Oh, well, you Mr Treehugger guy, your well was skanky all along, you're just blaming us for it, PROVE that you actually had drinkable water last year."
I mean, yes, there's annecdote, but there's also a lot of plain old evidence that fraking in contaminating acquifers. Just because some geologists say "gosh that's unlikely" means jack. They can't prove much about what the actual state of these different strata buried 1000's of feet deep actually is either. It is all guesswork and counter-claims on all sides at very best.
Still, when my family gets sick and my water burns and it starts right after you frak your gas wells, ummmmmmm, gosh, yeah, I'm just biased if I blame it on the fraking! ROFLMAO!
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
"the article notes, for instance, that much of the naturally radioactive deep water called flowback forced up along with fracking-extracted gas "was once being discharged into municipal sewage treatment plants and then rivers in Pennsylvania," leading to concern about pollution of public water supplies."
Bad sentence, timothy. Learn to chop it up a bit. It's like Perl: just because you could, doesn't mean you should.
I wonder how much more viable clean and renewable alternatives would be if the fossil fuel industry was not subsidized and was responsible for the clean up of its mess. I've seen smog and soot and smelled what thousands of gas burning cars do to the air. That has a cost that is hard to measure.
Alternatives would become more financially competitive if more work were put into them. I'd love to see the money oil companies spent on defending their dirty businesses go to research and development of cleaner technologies.
the marcellus shale has so much natural gas, we could all start driving cars powered by natural gas and all of the geopolitical headaches of oil would just go away. plus, with no incentive to safeguard foreign petroleum, we could just not care about security in the middle east
however, that's all fine and dandy until you consider the possibility that you are trading energy security for poisoned underground aquifers. i like my water supply clean, thanks
but the fracking goes on on a level far below the water table
still, it's like puncture holes that can induce mixing between layers. the poisons are not necessarily just from the fracking chemicals, there are all sorts of completely natural nasty minerals you don't want mixed up and introduced into your water supply with some artificial mayhem underground
the need then becomes that states and local governments REQUIRE drilling companies to go through a process whereby
1. they absolutely guarantee they follow procedures to carefully puncture the water table,
2. then seal their operations off from the water table, during operations,
3. and finally, when operations cease, to make sure they have a seal that is inspected and certified as the best we can technologically do
the problem is people acting too quickly and shoddy efforts and abandoned responsibilities, the usual lax standards when there is no fierce regulatory body around: you get the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
this is a case where strict government regulation is an absolute must. government regulation something that is apparently evil according republicans. i guess republicans don't have to turn the faucet on in their home!
finally, there is the issue of the chemicals they are using your fracking. a lot of these mictures are trade secrets. well, that trade secret veil needs to be pierced: if it goes into the ground near my water table, i don't give a flying f*ck about your trade secrets, i want to know what you are pumping down there, and my right to know that my water is safe supersedes your capitalist imperative
however, i was recently amused to find out one major componet of the fracking brew:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/world/asia/fracking-in-us-lifts-guar-farmers-in-india.html
Guar gum!
Yes, the same thing you see listed as a thickener on your ice cream!
Which makes sense, you want to shove something down there thick and rigid and with a high viscosity to shove the natural gas back up: water laced with sand and thickeners. Makes sense.
So this relieves my worry somewhat. But I still want to know every chemical going into the ground. I don't care about your trade secrets, it's my water!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As a Christian myself, I have to agree. Genesis is full of allegories, the Judo-Christian version of mythology. Much of the Bible is. That is why in some cases, for example the Gospels, there are multiple accounts of the same events: the humans that wrote the books, sometimes decades after the events took place, are fallible and forgetful. I just wish most religious types would understand this, and get off their soapboxes sometimes.
It is the same thought process as what the article is talking about: people believe what they want to believe and will argue until their death about it.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
There's no such thing as "motivated reasoning", there's only "reasoning", and it's not a good way to make policy.
Science is based on observation, and as a result we get "evidence-based" decisions. Knowing the likely result because you've done it before makes for good decisions.
When you have a lot of observations, you can sometimes discover underlying laws, rules, and insight into the mechanisms of outcome. This results in "analysis-based" decisions.
"Analysis-based" decisions are only valid when the rules and insight are properly applied. In any situation, you have to correctly identify that the rules you use is valid, and you *also* have to know that no other rules apply. No one does this perfectly and at all times, and so "analysis-based" decisions are less likely to be correct.
For an example, consider predicting the behaviour of an electrical circuit. The rules and insight for electronics are straightforward, but consider how often a real-life circuit fails to work as predicted. The same is true for software: setting aside bugs and misunderstanding of requirements, how often does a piece of software exhibit unpredicted behaviour?
And finally, there's "story-based" reasoning. That's where you make predictions based on gut feel and experience using insights from other disciplines, and then make decisions based on that. Economics is reasoning based on stories, as is Intelligent design.
For this example, in economics it's well known that a little inflation is good, a lot of inflation is bad, and negative inflation is very bad. What is the optimal value? Is the value exact, or can it be a little off (ie - is the plot of good/bad sharply peaked, or relatively flat)? How does one even *calculate* inflation?
Economics is all opinions and "schools of thought" with no predictive power. It explains why something happened, but it never seems to tell us what will happen next.
We need to get away from "story-based" decisions and rely more on evidence. Civilization is at a point where we now have unprecedented levels of information and data which could be mined for evidence and used to make decisions, so long as we ask the right questions.
For questions for which we have no readily available evidence, we should be gathering it. In cases where the risk/reward equation yields a high risk, such as permanently damaging the water supply over a wide swath of the country, it might be prudent to hold off until proper evidence has been gathered.
Course, I'm waiting for the frakking community to tell us that the flammable tap water is normal:
"What you mean your tap water isn't flammable? You got yourself some defective water. After all, it's made of hydrogen and oxygen: one was responsible for the Hindenberg, and the other is used as rocket fuel."
Remember the political spectrum isn't a straight line, but a circle; go far enough right you end up left.
They're called the politicians who are supporting and funding AGW for a variety of reasons: honest belief, a bogey man to point to in order to gain power (Christians and gays, Hitler and Jews, a bogey man helps rally the masses to your cause), or just plain greed with all the money-funneling schemes made up so far.
It is interesting to note that the order of creation starts at those things far away and stars etc. and ends with birds, fish, animals, man. Slowly getting closer to Man at the center.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
People don't believe the facts because sometimes scientists will make shit up.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
"That's not to say that all is peaches: the article notes, for instance, that much of the naturally radioactive deep water called flowback forced up along with fracking-extracted gas "was once being discharged into municipal sewage treatment plants and then rivers in Pennsylvania," leading to concern about pollution of public water supplies. Public scrutiny and regulation mean that's no longer true."
So, anti-fracking science changed this practice. Where was the fault with the anti-fracking science that led to these regulations? Are these regulations state or national?
This is a pure blowjob for the fracking crew. Congrats Slashdot, I hope you got paid well. PR is WAY easier than news.
only 1/2 the story, or even less. In the process of drilling down under, as a side effect, countless gallons/cubicyards/tons of polluted water are sunk into some deep drill hole since it's '"not worth/very polluted" to do otherwise.
Is it ever coming up? Just a question of time, I guess. Congratulations to the receivers!
What was the other one? Ah - pollution on the "side" - leaking methane and other potential endocrine disruptors accompanying the process and "escaping".
http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/chemicals.introduction.php/
Nice pic:
http://www.greencape.org/endocrine.html
From the mid 1990s by the Vice-provost of Caltech: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."
More like that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
Also:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/
All reasoning is also based on emotion, which relate to perceptions, assumptions, priorities and preferences which are, to some extent, outside of pure rationality (which why "technocracy" has many issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
But the biggest issue is that our socio-economic-political system is not well-adapted to handle "externalities" including systemic risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
Any reasonable projection over the next twenty years shows we will almost certainly have dirt-cheap PV given exponential growth of that industry and rapidly dropping costs. We may even have hot or cold fusion in that time (and other things). With alternatives on the way, there is not a very good case to be made for risking destroy our groundwater for just a bit more fossil fuels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Solar_power
http://pesn.com/2012/07/19/9602138_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July19/
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414559/a-new-approach-to-fusion/
And so on...
Accounting for externalities (including US defense spending for long oil supply lines), renewables (and energy efficiency) have been *cheaper* than fossil fuels since the 1970s... Two resources on that from around 1980:
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Actually, the stars come in on day four, long after the sun and moon and continents. Which of course reflects the Hebrew's cosmology, which had the stars as basically just decorations in a tin ceiling over the Earth, as indicated in this thing I whipped up here. http://www.cleanposts.com/images/6/67/Firm2.png
The Austrian school predicted the dot-com bubble would crash, which is did during Clinton's final year. Then they predicted another bubble based on housing before it happened, and while it was going-on they predicted it would burst and crash the economy. They got all three things right.
They also predicted the TARP bailouts and stimulus and QE1 would create another bubble, which did indeed happen (the derivatives are leveraged at a higher rate in 2012 than they were in 2007), and now they are saying that bubble will burst too.
Great! Glad to hear it.
Just a couple of questions:
1) When will the next bubble burst?
2) Why don't all economists subscribe to the Austrian school of thought?
Anxiously awaiting your reply. I enjoy gaining new insights into complex subjects.
"One of the most common arguments against a scientific finding is confirmation bias: the scientist or scientists only look for data that confirms a desired conclusion." And ignore data that doesn't support. It's how a high school term paper is written.
Regarding fracking... yeah, it makes me uncomfortable. They pump large amounts of water and other "stuff" underground. It may or may not contaminate ground water supplies. It is capable of contaminating ground water if something unexpected happens. And unexpected things do happen. Also, they won't tell us what the "stuff" they're pumping exactly is.
Sounds like Teh Man got to Dr. Vengosh.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Here you go. That's where the profits are going. Not to your pension. What the #$!@ has a pension anymore? My Dad, Mother-in-Law, and all my friends parents lost theirs.
Milk is a lot more tightly regulated than gas, and for good reason. You don't drink gasoline. Well, I don't anyway.
Finally, you're implying that we're all desperately suckling at the teat of gov't for the sack of our own incompetence (using the loaded term 'welfare state' is a dead give away). I resent this sentiment, because for some reason it's ok to go begging on bended knee to our social betters for enough food and medicine to die a painless debt but taking hold of a a good life is a no-no. Whoops, just loaded my own sentence.
Anyay reread that first paragraph I wrote. We could pay our national debt off tomorrow with what the 1% have in their overseas bank accounts. Funny how that works. How they keep us desperate, on edge, and begging. Almost like they meant to do that...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, here on the west coast of the UK, if you were to look at all the litle fault lines it'd look like a smashed car windscreen, but, here, on the waters edge i can see across the bay where outside my window, 'they' are going to resume fracking soon. Last year they did it, there was a small earthquake, this year they're back, i guess they found something, so we will all be looking forward to another earthquake, hope the folks at nuke plant 3 miles down the coast are all wearing hard hats ..
wouldn't want to stand in the way of a wonderful business like oil.
me ? .. i'm taking the pills and have a fast 2 wheeled exit strategy ..
new study shows people believe what they want too.
All the political activists need to get out of science right now.
Science didn't get where it is today through public relations, deals with politicians, ad campaigns, marketing, rigged documentaries, and other nonsense.
It got where it is by showing empirical results and humbly being right in extreme detail.
The people trying to use science to push their pathetic little agendas need to be driven out of science. They track their dirty feet all over those honored halls.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Like, say, water supplies that can be ignited and town sickness rates skyrocketing immediately after fracking occurs is not evidence enough. They are also nitpicking very specific cases, while ignoring hundreds or thousands of others. The air pollution concerns aren't about using it as fuel, but about products released during the fracking process itself. Most of the instances of "bad science" it talks about are more critics getting carried away, rather then actual misrepresentation. Most of the cases they try to refute, simply move into the not quite enough to believe category rather then complete refutation, while again ignoring countless others. It goes on extensively about flowback, and says it is being regulated, but only mentions one state that actually regulates it.
This just screams of Teach the Contraversy for Global Warming and Evolution.
That would be the university funded by Duke Energy, right?
Which side of that bread is buttered? I bet the PhD knows the answer to that question!
Austria must be awash with newly minted billionaires. Care to send a couple hot female ones my way? Surely there's hundreds to spare with that kind of predictive certainty.
Nuff said. If that greedy monster got multiple exemptions and laws passed to enable fracking while simultaneously preventing the EPA from controlling fracking operations, you know it's bad.
Duke - Historical center of the attack against medical evidence proving smoking and second-hand smoke was hazardous to one's health
Sorry but the fact the gas companies got exemptions from the clean air and clean water acts makes me highly suspicious they knew from day one this was risky and they wanted to limit their exposure to lawsuits and fines. Shattering bedrock releases the gas just like it's supposed to do. The fact it migrates upward isn't shocking. Why exactly would you assume gas would stay put once you shatter what was containing it.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Take, for instance, the recentish revelations that climate models weren't taking clouds into consideration very well, if at all.
Or look at the spread of predictions, with the extreme ones predicting 20-30 foot sea level rise by 2100.
Or the 1970 (?) climate models which predicted global cooling.
It's all just science, nothing remarkable in its variability, but the left wing fanatics take the extreme predictions as gospel and refuse to even admit there's any uncertainty, while the right win uses the uncertainty as excuse to doubt everything.
I figure that all those who take definitive positions are the true fanatics, whether left or right, refusing to recognize the reality that the future is not as predictable as they would wish.
Infuriate left and right
His Hitler reference was to the general case of politicians setting up bogeymen to scare the voters.
Your willful misunderstanding makes me doubt everything else you say. You need to watch it, lest you become one of the bogeyman producers yourself.
Infuriate left and right
If you so much as question the "scientific consensus" you are demonized and called a moron. If you find contrary evidence, you get frozen out of academia.
So, when someone isn't convinced about AGW, they're called stupid or kooks or nuts or crazy or morons. That isn't how to persuade someone to change their thinking. I'm personally on the fence about AGW and fracking. I could be convinced one side or the other is right, if only the two man camps weren't populated with so many abrasive douche bags.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Then I'm not seeing a huge problem with a "Go Cheney!" right here?
Here's the thing... While most people seem to be fixated on battling back and forth about whether or not "climate change" is really happening (vs. any noted changes just being part of some natural cycle of events, and/or possibly inaccurate data) -- it seems to me the real questions get pushed by the wayside.
EG. If everything said and predicted about warming caused by burning fossil fuels is completely correct, that still does NOTHING to show that it's actually worthwhile to actively take steps to reverse the situation. I think it's pretty outlandish to claim that some government regulation and a push to use "cleaner" fuels would magically turn around warming of the atmosphere caused by 200+ years of burning coal, oil, natural gas, etc. world-wide. Even if you could completely halt all burning of fossil fuels tomorrow? What kind of negative impact would that have on modern society -- and how quickly would it correct the warming problem?
EVERY single time I ask these types of questions, I get the same old trite replies of, "Well ... it's obvious if we got into the situation by doing this bad stuff, we're better off to stop doing the bad stuff as quickly as possible!" IMO, there's SO much good that's come of utilizing this energy, you've got to have a REALLY awful scenario to justify putting a stop to it. Worst case scenarios I've read discuss what amounts to some re-arranging of where our coastlines start and where the climate will be more or less comfortable. And considering it's going to happen relatively gradually (not overnight in some big surprise event where you wake up and ea whole city is wiped out), it sounds like humanity can largely adapt.
I'm pretty certain we DO only have a limited amount of oil we can get out of the ground at anything resembling a cost-effective rate. So again, where's the problem with that? Let people use/buy up the stuff as long as it's viable, and before long, we'll be effectively out of it and no longer need to worry about its contribution to climate change.
Once a person has made up their mind, it's very difficult to change it, even in the face of indisputable evidence to the contrary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
This is one reason why political candidates would like you to form a decision early on, rather than remain undecided until election day.
For years Victoria BC paid labs to prove that shitting in the ocean didn't cause problems with the ecosystem. You can prove any negative hypothesis if you pay enough scientists. The Nazis did it all the time, hell they even proved the inferiority of Jews with the pseudo science of phrenology. To say that fracking is completely ecologically safe completely ignores the evidence and experience of some.
We all suffer from this problem, but I resist the notion that these people are fully rational. A truly rational person is concerned with the truth of the matter, not an agenda.
It's always about cancer isn't it. Hey and you guessed it ... always impossible to prove any causal link to much of anything related to cancer but lets play that game and beat our heads against the wall even though we already know what the outcome will be.
High barrier for rising above noise floor in which >20% of everyone dies of cancer anyway. You can focus on certain types of cancers to improve your chances except in most cases nobody really has much clue which those would be apriori.
Lag time of onset... waiting 10 or 20 years for a statistically significant signal is too long and too late.
Lack of ability to isolate cause and effect.
Lack of will/funds/humans to conduct a large and long enough survey which could provide any statistically significant and therefore useful information.
This makes the whole cancer angle moot... It is not falsifiable. Even if there was a real health risk in the form of increased cancer you won't find it unless things are really bad.
What I do know is some pretty nonsensical language made its way into safe drinking water act and it is still there as far as I can tell. I'm not against fracking... I'm against government corruption. I'm against people doing sloppy work. I'm against corrupt regulatory frameworks which intentionally fail to properly internalize externalities.
Frack is an excellent Best Seller BBC Micro Model B video game! The puzzles are superb! That's my top tip whilst you ponder this one ...
The purpose of existence is to make money.
You can literally put facts in front of people, and they will just ignore them
Including such facts as "This benzene-toluene mixture we combine with diesel fuel and water, then pump at high pressure into the bedrock where your drinking water comes from is totally harmless. Trust us. No, of course we won't let you test the chemicals we use, that's proprietary."
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
There is a debate in Epistemology that relates to that subject.
Put simply, Popper and his followers claim that a scientific theory remains accepted until a falsifying evidence is found. Others (e.g. Feyerabend) disagree, calling this a rationalistic utopia. For them falsifying evidences are simply ignored, until a new theory emerges and makes its path through acceptation. As example they mention the Perihelion of Mercury, which was know a long time before the relativity theory appeared, but in no way was seen as a falsification of the Newtonian mechanics.
You have some good point , especially that model spreads make also a prediction spreads, but then you ruin it with often debunked point :
"Or the 1970 (?) climate models which predicted global cooling."
Go ahead, show them to us. There has been 1 or 2 article about a global cooling, and IIRC one of them is about dust (nuclear winter). Even in the 70th there were more article about global warming.
And then you show a bias with "left wing fanatic". ha yes, the otehr guy are worst than my guy. Well i have a bad news for you : politics in general misuse anything they can to advance an agenda (be it science, economy, religion, piracy, child porn, or whatever). But (some, maybe a majority) right wing conservative *reject* science. And that is the difference. See misusing a prediction to advance an agenda is one thing, compeltely rejecting facts because it disturbs you is waay waaaaay worse.
What happened to doing science to find the truth and hold judgement until some good proofs are provided. "Finding faults" sounds like "I want this opinion to be false so let's find faults and claim we can dismiss it entirely.".
Fraking requires the injection at high pressure of a chemical mix that is kept an industrial secret. I don't think that the claims that this mix ends up in aquifers used for tap water has been debunked.
So there, at least, we have a problem. There are some crazy ecologists out there making crazy claims. On any safe or unsafe industrial activity you can find bogus ecologist claim. Proving these bogus says nothing about the harmlessness of the activity. It would be like saying that disproving that the NASA had knowledge of alien technology disproves the lunar landing.
People, do SCIENCE ! Look for truth and change your opinion based on facts.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Always be wary of motivation vs fact. Motivation is measured in dollars, fact is measured in labs, but only perceived by the public through the media, which are all motivated by dollars and not facts.
The key question is this: is there enough money to be gained from fracking to change publicly perceived facts? Absolutely. My problem is that if it turned out that fracking was actually OK, I'd have heard about it by now. I know folks in the field, and they don't know anything about any new scientific findings. They're reluctant workers getting paid mad cash to do what they hate for the sake of their families. They're not idiots, and they keep a close eye on this shit. Big media says it's ok? Fuck that.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
The news outlet is the Wall Street Journal - owned by the FOX networks. The source is Duke - shills for the tobacco industry. Yeah, I think I'll get my information other places, thanks.
One word. Gasland : http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/.
Oh all right, it was a portmanteau
And I do mean that in all seriousness.
Any time you politely request that these PRO FRACKING people prove conclusively that there's absolutely no chance their operations will contaminate the environment (or words to that effect) their response always amounts to "our lawyers have advised us there's no way you can conclusively prove that ANY (potential) contamination was a DIRECT result of our operations."
Everybody with any real sense knows that if you ask for "hard science" and all they do is LAWYER UP you can BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR it's a shifty operation.
And by that all I mean is they KNOW there's no way to be sure they will not contaminate the environment, but the money is worth it and they're fairly sure you'll never make the charges stick.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Typical when the industry giants feel threatened.
Discredit, slander and paint in a bad light the opposition and let the media have a field day with them.
No reason to do anymore once the sheep bite the bait from the media. The media will try and execute you in a blink of an eye.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/junkscience.cfm
I also believe corporate PR Shrills also post on forums such as this one - there is no limit to their lack of integrity and ethics.
Careful who you choose to trust.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/04/a-new-record-for-retractions.html
Because that worked so well before......
Confirmation bias has long since infected entire scientific disciplines. When that happened, peer review ceased to be useful -- within that discipline.
What if physicists started reviewing climatologists papers? What if geologists started reviewing the papers of astrophysicists?
Do that, and maybe peer-review can work again.
another round of battlestar-jokes...
because the inspectors are in cohoots with the industry. they are more interested in their golf game together than a proper adversarial arrangement necessary for an effective job
i said lack of regulations and EFFECTIVE REGULATORS is the problem
where regulations are excessive and confusing, an effective regulator can still understand the problem and know what needs to be followed to prevent disasters
but republicans gut regulatory agency's funding and gut regulations
and i find your line of reasoning specious: that we need less regulations. it isn't about quantity. it is about quality and proper enforcement activity
as long as things like BP are happening, your line of reasoning is dangerous and wrong. we obviously need MORE effective enforcement of regulations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...says one trolling racist to another
I've been discounting the spin from the Wall Street Journal ever since Rupert Murdoch took over.
Not disregarding, just adding a few more grains of salt.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Just curious - what about the earthquakes reported to have been caused by fracking?
Earn cash online
but you're a fucking moron. the regulations need to be enforced
poor people with a destroyed environment for generations can't fight corporate lawyers with deep pockets and political connections
the function of the government is to represent and protect the people. fuck you and your ignorant "oh you don't need speed enforcement, just sue the broke drunk when he kills you" no regulations approach
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I came into this thread expecting Battlestar Galactica puns, What i got was yet more political debate and serious discussion on the matter at hand. What happened to you slashdot?
They only need to pass laws that REQUIRE a fracking company's CEO, Board of Directors, majority stock holders, and their families, live in the area and drink the water they claim is safe. If they aren't willing to put their families at risk that they might be wrong, then it's not safe enough to allow fracking to be done to that area period.
The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
spies cointelpro disinformation
This recently leaked document describes modern COINTELPRO techniques for manipulating Internet forums. Observant readers may have noticed these techniques being used in familiar online forums. Part of modern media literacy includes understanding these techniques. This document contains information about:
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3. Eight Traits of the Disinformationalist
4. How to Spot a Spy (Cointelpro Agent)
5. Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression
Frankly, the onus should be on the petroleum companies to prove that fracking is safe--not on third-party scientists to prove that fracking is dangerous. There isn't much clear measurement of the environmental impact of fracking because the scale and depth of the operation make it difficult to measure. The problems could arise hundreds of years in the future. The fracking chemicals could diffuse over wide areas, which make population studies very hard to localize. If fracking kill 10000 people over 100 years, would we even notice?
What about those of us that are neither for nor against hydraulic fracturing? I know at least a few people who think (as I do) that the questions here are these:
1. Does hydraulic fracturing alter any ecological systems?
2. If so, to what degree?
3. What are the side effects of those alterations?
As long as there *could be* a substantial risk to these ecological systems, we should probably hold off on the technique. On the flip side, we should also invest heavily into researching these topics so that if we do find it to do little harm, we can proceed as soon as possible with the technique. It certainly has a lot of positive repercussions -- creating jobs, overall cheaper & more abundant energy, etc. and we need to know very soon if it's something we can pursue responsibly.
I've read about a hydraulic fracturing technique that involved pulling CO2 out of the air and pumping it into the ground, essentially using it as the hydraulic fluid. Perhaps that technique could offer an even better solution? These are all questions worth answering, instead of arguing with each other.
"... feedback from other people who share their views..."
The Internet makes it particularly easy for people to ignore viewpoints that they either don't share, or which don't fall within their usual interest areas.
That said, Hitler's 'Big Lie' philosophy works quite well--say it often, say it loud and shout down opposition until all anyone can hear is you...and your lie becomes the effective truth.
Much 'common knowledge' is false:
Everyone 'knows' that people in Europe in the time of Columbus thought the world was flat...except that most knew that it was spherical.
The US government spends trillions to fight things like drugs, terrorists and overseas governments which statistically are extremely minor threats.
We base funding for medical research on emotional fears. Yes, breast cancer is dangerous....but far more women are threatened by heart disease.
People spend lots of time and energy agonizing over abduction of children by strangers...but the real risk is family, friends, trusted adults and other acquaintances.
Your odds of being killed by a terrorist in the USA are about the same as being crushed by your couch.
According to US Gov't analysis, the 'War on Terror' has increased both the number and quality of terrorists.
The 'War on Drugs' has resulted in more users of harsher and more dangerous drugs--and huge profits for cartels and politicians world-wide. Places where, in 1977, I might have been able to buy cigs & beer underage, are now places where crack and meth can be found.
The corruption and violence which surrounds illegal drugs exists primarily because of their legal status...illegal items cost more and people dealing in them have no legal protection. The damage done to society by the actual use of recreational drugs is primarily attributable to illegal status, with the exception of those ever popular legal recreational drugs, tobacco (most addictive) and alcohol (combines depression, released inhibitions and lower anger thresholds.)
Fracking, per se, isn't a problem, it's possible associated side-effects. The most common problem is the injection of various chemicals into the rock strata which may be dangerous--but we've had a type of fracking for years which uses propane or LNG as the fracking fluid....no noxious chemicals.
Other things involved which seldom get mentioned are: the effect of sand mining on local watersheds, the effect of heavy truck traffic on local roads by sand companies which are exempt from most local taxes....
People tend to forget (or be unaware,) that the world they know exists solely in their own mind, and is lacking in many significant areas which their mind has filtered out as 'unimportant' or 'impossible.'
We're very good at finding faces...consider the faces of religious figures found everywhere from toast to rock formations to water-stains. We have no idea what Jesus or Mary looked like, yet people see 'their' faces...how do they know who they are seeing?
Motivation is measured in dollars
There's an example of the topic right there, spoken by a mammon worshiper. Money can motivate, but it is by no means the only motivation. What motivated you to post that comment? Did somebody pay you?
Free Martian Whores!
If you want to know why "libertarian groups are funding anti-climate change campaigns", that would seem pretty obvious. The pro climate-change groups are generally pushing for governmental solutions. Libertarians are trying to REDUCE the size and scope of government as much as possible, so clearly, they wouldn't side with any group advocating more government spending on programs, hiring more govt. employees to oversee it, etc.
I don't think libertarians are "anti science" or simply of a mindset that they don't want to get stuck paying for damage they cause. I think they're simply of the opinion that it's BAD policy to spend millions of tax dollars on whichever random solutions a committee decides would be worth trying next, as they screw around with such unknowns as dumping chemicals in the oceans to promote algae growth....
Now, I do appreciate the work one of the parent posters did, citing many references regarding possible reduction in food supply from global warming... I admit that's a very real potential downside. On the other hand, does it take into account potential new farmable land that would result from increased temperatures closer to the poles, where it was never an option before? I'm no scientist, obviously, but I know the laws of physics still apply. For every action, there is still an equal and opposite reaction. How much land is there on earth that's currently colder or cooler than what we'd find ideal? Is it possible there's as much as would suffer real damage from getting too warm/hot?
If you can't operate without breaking laws and your own industry association drafts the laws then you are out of step with the industry.
The answer for the dumb is "just about everyone".
They were yelling this is what global warming does! Expect more and more stronger hurricanes like this, the damage will be incredible in the coming years! Yeah, that didn't happen.
There exist inconvenient truths such as that we were having more CAT 3 and higher hurricanes 150 years ago than we are now. America's deadliest natural disaster ever was the 1900 Galveston hurricane which wiped out the town except for a few buildings (and it wasn't below sea level like New Orleans). The body situation was so bad they had to resort to mass funeral pyres.
The NOAA even had to come out and say there was no evidence of any change in hurricane frequency or strength that can be associated with any global warming.
Libertarians don't like the massive increase in the size and power of government, and subsequent decrease in the freedom of the people, that would result if many of the ostensible solutions were enacted.
Link the valuable resource of safe drinking water to the profits of Fracking.
How?
Here's some ideas.
1) Put the (well 3rd party monitored) water company in charge of this type of mining rights
2) Put the environment agency in charge of monitoring the bidding process for the rights
3) The company actually mining must actually use the water. Everyone involved in the company has to drink water from around the area
Then if there's no problem -great! If there is a problem then the economic incentive is there.
Enforced capitalism.
A blog I run for the wealth