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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."
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!
Hell, they can't even run a Brothel correctly. And people think that we're gonna have BETTER health care with Government involved?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Well they should be glad we left it to the private sector. Your chances of surviving and making a full recovery from illness and severe trama are much higher in te USA than any state with government run healthcare. Anybody who tells you different is either lying or mis informed. In other countries victomns of brain trama , spine injuries , etc that live do not near the rehabilitation treatment to help them recover the ability to walk, run etc. those expensive treatments are not an option so they just expect them to be disabled for life. In the USA your chances o surviving cancer are 15% higher than in any country with socialized medicine. Now tell me if your doctor found a tumor on you and said your chances are 60\40 at hospital A and 75/25 at hospital B but hospital B charges 15% higher fees which would you choose? Many claims that the US healthcare system is not as effective as say the UK or Canada are based on statistics that are not easily comparable to each other. For example often sited infant mortality rates are really lower in the US because we count babies that die during birth. Other countries count babies up to a few days old as stillborn. Also genetic/social factors in certain ethnic Populations can skew Numbers. Swedes have socialized Medicine and are healthier than Americans as a whole. However swedes who immigrate to America tend to be healthier than other Americans and also swedes who love in sweden. In fact Swedish immigrants to America live an average 4 years longer than swedes who live in Sweden with all it's great socialized healthcare.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!