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."

Comments

"Finding Fault"

[broginator]

I see what you did there...

Motiviated reasoning?

[Tanktalus]

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?

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they pay for AP articles? They aren't free.

The other news organizations that pay for the articles and subsequently give them for free are the stupid ones.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[JoshuaZ]

Confirmation bias certainly exists throughout the political spectrum. However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end. In particular, the more educated self-identified conservatives are, the more they doubt climate change is real. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503, but the reverse occurs for nuclear power and liberals, or vaccines and liberals, the more educated they are, the more likely they are to agree with the scientific consensus despite the views associated with their end of the political spectrum that run against it. This breaks down pretty badly outside the US though http://www.esds.ac.uk/doc/5357/mrdoc/pdf/5357userguide.pdf. Similarly, there's some evidence that conservatives respond more poorly than liberals to data that undermines their ideological claims (there was a Slashdot article that linked to this but I can't unfortunately find it right now). The upshot is that while there's definite political tribalism and confirmation bias throughout the political spectrum, at present there seem to be cultural issues that are making the problem more extreme among self-identified conservatives, although why is not at all clear.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[Belial6]

Confirmation bias certainly exists throughout the political spectrum. However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end.

I see what you did there....

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[bug1]

I've always just called it "confirmation bias."

Ive always called it trust, people dont trust an oppenent to tell the truth, they judge it subjectively rather than objectively.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[cpu6502]

>>>However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end.

Not true. /. just ran an article two days ago about political bias, and people's opinions on the weather. Right-leaning persons said it was no warmer over the last decade, while left-leaning persons estimated it was 5 degrees warmer. Turns out neither was right (temperatures increased 1/2 a degree). Furthermore they were *equally* wrong, and one side was not more wrong ("worst") than the other.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rational human beings are a mythological creature, much like unicorns. It's an attractive lie, especially to introverted, thinking individuals, but it's still a lie. As rational as you want to be, you still have to weigh the "credibility" of every piece of evidence, and that is often an irrational value judgement, based partly on the actual merits of the evidence, partly on your perception of bias in the generation or reporting of the evidence, partly on your perception of bias in the relevant technical discipline (ie: you may give more weight to one study that shows fracking is bad because you believe the preponderance of research would be performed with the goal of demonstrating that fracking is safe). So, even if you can actually perform your rational analysis perfectly, the inputs to that analysis have already had their rationality removed.

Even adults would rather have one marshmallow right now than two in ten minutes. The difference is that an adult will synthesize a rational justification for his irrational behavior

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[Pseudonym]

So what you're saying is that on that measure, left-wing persons had a higher absolute error and right-wing persons had a higher relative error. So the GP is correct for some definition of "worse".

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[tomhath]

As I read it, the article concludes that people who distrust authority tend to trust climate change scientists but are skeptical of nuclear scientists, while people who trust authority tend to be skeptical of climate change scientists but more trusting of nuclear scientists. The conservative/liberal angle is yours, but both groups are selective in what science they trust or distrust. From the article:

Egalitarian Communitarians possessed of high science literacy and numeracy were most likely to diverge from the mean subject’s presumed underestimation of climate change risks. Yet on nuclear power risks, those same respondents shared the mean subject’s presumed overestimation of the dangers of nuclear power. Likewise, Hierarchical Individualists who displayed high science literacy and numeracy were the least likely to see nuclear power as unsafe but the also the most skeptical of climate change.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[timothy]

Does the article link here send you to a paywall? It doesn't hit a paywall for me, and I'm certainly not a WSJ subscriber or anything -- we try to avoid paywalled* sources (and if a paywalled source *is* linked, our intent is to label it).

Nowadays, "paywalled" is a continuum, though, rather than a binary ... some sites, like the NYT, are free of charge for x-many articles per month, or require trivial not-exactly-registration, like some sites that have required zip-code entry, to satisfy their marketing departments, I guess.

WSJ has a mix of articles, many of which are fully paywalled, but again, this one doesn't appear to be at all blocked to me ...

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[theshowmecanuck]

Every time I see this kind of debate I definitely remember the articles that come up periodically on Slashdot about how right wing / conservatives don't take to new ideas, and as such cannot easily be convinced of anything once their mind is set? And to be sure, it says it right in the name we give them, and that they often give themselves (proudly at that): conservative. Never mind that most of the monied right wingers don't want their income interrupted (especially those that already have more than they can spend in the rest of their lives). And so this is even intensified when/since they see science as imposing on their god given right to make money whatever the cost may be. Given their natural inclination not to cotton to new ideas, and the fact many new environmental ideas encroach on their income dot dot dot

But you do make an interesting and I think valid point about the left. I've often wondered (OK, sometimes wondered) if the term "conservative liberal" makes sense. :D Those that entrench themselves in their left leaning beliefs and can't be convinced to moderate (yeah, I know, some things really are black and white, but others aren't... most aren't in fact). Some really go over the top. And when I think of these I think of the original founder of Greenpiece who eventually quit his organization when some of these people went too far left of him, and took over his baby.

Of course then there the conveniently environmentally correct. Basically those whose motives are essentially selfish. For instance those who already live in the forest and don't want any more people to move there and upset their idyllic peace, so they claim environmental concerns to keep people out. Or those that live in cities (Vancouver is great for this... third worst traffic in North America and worst in Canada) who don't want better roads or highways built because they don't want them near their place (rampant nimby-ism). So they yell about the environment and tell people who have no choice but to work in the city they should move there instead of drive, purposely neglecting to think about the fact that most of those who live in the suburbs are there because there is no room in the city, and any place they could get is too expensive for them to inhabit... or that if they took the transit they would have to spend four or five hours a day in transit... because the jobs they need are in the city. So what that in order to have a life a new road every now and then would be in order (they can yelll about the environment because they're not the ones who need to drive). Besides the less gridlock the less pollution from stop and go.

And if roads are not the solution then rapid transit is. But no-one wants to pay for it or have their life disrupted to have them built. To get the new Cambie line built in Vancouver, which took forever to get approved and was an exercise in brutality where so many argued it wasn't needed and wouldn't pay for itself or even get the ridership numbers needed to pay for itself for years.... but when finally forced to be built by the need for better transit from the airport for the Olympics, reached required ridership levels to make the payments within months. Or like in Toronto which is constantly teetering on the edge of economic disaster because of liberals who want all the social programs and want someone else to pay for it. So there isn't the money for things that are really needed like new subways (worst subway system for a city its size... evvverrrr).

So yeah... the left can be just as messed up in how they treat others too. Selfishness doesn't know left from right.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[NatasRevol]

Well, only one group was able to acknowledge that change was happening...

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[bky1701]

Actually, that suggests the right had a qualitative failure, and the left had a quantitative failure. Wrong magnitude of prediction is a lesser error than complete failure to predict the occurrence of some event. Had you asked without allowing specification of magnitude (which is unrealistic to expect most people to remember anyway), the right would be completely wrong and the left completely correct.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[A nonymous Coward]

Confirmation bias certainly exists throughout the political spectrum. However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end.

Ahh, a left winger I see, cherry picking one category. Excellent confirmation of confirmation bias.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[rtb61]

Let's look at the left and right of this argument. The left the side that doesn't want to take any undue risk the conservative side, hey wait what? How come the conservative, low risk people people ended up on the left. Lets look at the other side, the right, in this case the minority of people who will generate additional profit from fracking, that being their single concern, those that which to exploit the environement and their only motive being greed and the absolute willingness to take risks with the environment. The risk of course being limited with the rest of society taking the burden of the risk.

So the conservative people unwilling to take risk with their environment and those people not profiting by fracking but who most certainly are taking the cost risk are basically being smeared as lefties ie socialists and communists. Whilst the exploiters get raised to the Christian Right, doing greed and exploitation in God's image. Isn't it really interesting how conservative people are being labelled politically as radicals lefties and how ruthless greed driven exploiters managed to label themselves totally, falsely as conservatives.

The greatest fracking risk is a substantive earthquake in a major fracking field creative a deep vertical fault through large numbers of artificial gas and toxic water filled horizontal faults all under pressure and releasing it all to the environment in a huge explosive and poisonous rush. So basically all fracking fields in earthquake zones are ticking poisonous fuel air time bombs, buried under the feet of millions of Americans now at risk, not a matter of if just when they will go off.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[khallow]

The greatest fracking risk is a substantive earthquake in a major fracking field creative a deep vertical fault through large numbers of artificial gas and toxic water filled horizontal faults all under pressure and releasing it all to the environment in a huge explosive and poisonous rush.

Why hasn't that happened already? Deep fluids under pressure already exist down there and they tend to be rather toxic too. You're referring to a scenario that could happen any time before humans. Yet somehow humans are going to trigger what nature hasn't.

Similarly, fracking uses techniques that are already used in normal oil fields. Why haven't these fields experienced such catastrophic consequences?

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[khallow]

Conservatism in particular is not a right wing phenomenon, but can happen to any belief system. The Precautionary Principle is the ultimate expression of conservatism, yet it's a left wing, environmentalism thing. And there's always people complaining that if we remove minor social programs, that we're revert to 19th century societies with sweat shops, pea soup smogs, and such.

And as long as we're considering such research how about the stuff kicking around that allegedly shows the right wing being more empathetic (empathy not actually extending to giving a shit, presumably) and understanding of rival beliefs and motives than the left wing?

Frankly, I think there are all sorts of axes one could make, willingness to try new things, pragmatism versus idealism, authoritarianism versus libertarianism/anarchism, etc. And broad political labels such as left and right wing doesn't for the most part fit nicely on one side or the other of those axes.

Second, the vast majority of this research seems a very tiresome attempt to turn normal human beliefs into treatable illnesses. It's simpler to explain such things through self-interest. My view here is that if it takes significant medical treatment to get a large portion of the population to agree with you on policy, then that's not a good indication of the sanity of your political views.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[dr2chase]

Yeah, but if you do it that way, then you don't get to claim that both sides are equivalent. They're not. One is fuddled and useless, the other is batshit-crazy and dangerous.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[metallurge]

The greatest fracking risk is a substantive earthquake in a major fracking field creative a deep vertical fault through large numbers of artificial gas and toxic water filled horizontal faults all under pressure and releasing it all to the environment in a huge explosive and poisonous rush. So basically all fracking fields in earthquake zones are ticking poisonous fuel air time bombs, buried under the feet of millions of Americans now at risk, not a matter of if just when they will go off.

That's true if the energy put into the ground were to accumulate. I suppose in the very short term, that may be true, but in the medium term (like a couple of months to a couple of years max), these producing wells are not only returning essentially all of the pressurized frac water, plus pressurized salt water from the production zone, plus pressurized natural gas, plus maybe pressurized hydrocarbon liquids. Dead-simple economics would make it clear that if you are spending more energy to insert the pressurized frac water than the energy you can recover, the well will not make the investors any money. The reason why this sector of the energy market has really taken off over the last 30 years isn't because it is a net loss, I can assure you. Therefore, the net energy "buried under the feet of millions of Americans", as you so vividly put it, isn't really increasing as you seem to think it is, at least not directly from the frac-ing that goes on in order to produce oil and (natural) gas. The net energy underground is diminishing as we depressurize reservoirs, not building up as you imagine. Also, to highlight a very important point, frac-ing a well is done for the purpose of liberating oil and natural gas from rock that would not naturally release them in commercial quantities. Oil and natural gas are being produced from less-and-less readily available reservoirs. The low-hanging fruit has been picked, as it were, so we have to work harder and harder to produce from less-and-less easy reservoirs. Frac-ing is one of the technologies which makes this possible.

People are just flat-out hysterical and wrongheaded about so much of this. What people *should* be scrutinizing is the injection wells. These are wells which are either drilled for the purpose of water (produced formation saltwater and recovered frac water) disposal, or which are repurposed (old) production wells which are no longer commercially viable. These wells *are* potentially subject to the buildup you describe, and therefore are at least theoretically/potentially long-term dangerous. Now, in old oil-producing country, these disposal wells and the geology underlying them tend to have been pretty well-understood for a long time now. The reasonably-safe disposal of produced salt water has been going on for a loooong time now. Particularly with repurposed old production wells, you are injecting water back where you have already greatly reduced the reservoir pressure, so in a way, you are restoring things closer to the way they used to be prior to human intervention.

Standing between a doomsday I-can-imagine-it-so-it's-a-real-danger scenario and life as we know it are some things people may not know. First, hydraulic fracturing is designed to break down (create cracks in) rock that contains hydrocarbons, so those hydrocarbons can be released. This is done at a few thousand pounds of pressure with a few thousand horsepower of pump. Since the fracturing pressure falls away pretty quickly in the 3-d rock formation (stands to reason it's a distance-cubed pressure decline), increasing the size/pressure of a frac job one order of magnitude is going to take three orders of magnitude increase in pressure pumping capacity. So where we are now, technically, is probably essentially where we will be for the forseeable future, in terms of energy we're pumping downhole. Capability-wise, just so we're all clear, current technology can fracture out up to several hundred feet from the drilled (and cased and cemented) hole.

Second,

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[TapeCutter]

Rational human beings are a mythological creature, much like unicorns.

That's just a rationialization that allows you to stop thinking and do what ever "feels good". A Sagan quote seems in order here...“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the Unites States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[metallurge]

(replying to myself) To be explicit, I'll make one more point really clear. Frac-ing and disposal don't really go together in the same well. If it was a well that needed hydraulic fracturing to economically produce, that reservoir is probably going to be uneconomical to dispose into. The best reservoirs to dispose into are those which flowed freely until mostly drained, thereby becoming mostly depressurized.

Also, to be really clear, BP's Macondo well problems had nothing whatsoever to do with frac-ing. They had to do with failures in the engineering and implementation of the casing and cement, plus of course the blowout preventer which should have been the final line of defense against those other failures. I only brought that in as an example of what can happen when the human-engineered part of the picture fails. Your scenario imagines the human-engineered part being stronger than the ground itself, which pretty much has the true risks backwards.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[silentcoder]

Could it be because the very definition of a conservative is "one who clings to existing ideas and ways of doing things" ?

Now the degree of that is definitely up for debate, because many "conservatives" today are actually pushing for radical changes to the system the likes of which has never existed (or at least- not been implemented in centuries) but personally I see those merely as following the logical conclusions of the lines of thinking they had been embracing since their great grandparent's time and never questioned.

Another aspect may well be that such a large contingent (perhaps the entirety) of the religious right are politically conservative. They must skew the average for conservative voters simply because religion actively encourages cognitive dissonance - if you habitually do so, it's only to be expected that you'll end up doing so in other spheres of life as well.
Perhaps all this data really tells us is that the stereotype of the religious right being badly educated may not be as true as we generally hold - but smart, educated religious people often still cling to the church-taught way of believing authoritive sources over empirical ones.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[Vintermann]

There are various kinds of conservativism. Many are usually sensible (environmental conservativism, moral conservativism). But the most dangerous sort, I think, is what I like to call power conservativism. A power conservative thinks that people who currently have some kind of power should be allowed to keep it, and get more of it just in case someone wants to take it away from them.

The goal is entrenching the present hierarchies of power. Change in itself isn't bad, only change that topples leaders or empowers "the rabble".

Some genuinely authoritarian people may have a power conservative attitude despite not being very powerful themselves. But mostly, it's just a common human inclination, fueled by uncertainty, that happens to play out most in those who have much to lose.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[nedlohs]

Surely be wrong by 0.5 degrees is "less wrong" than being wrong by 4.5 degrees?

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[umghhh]

I do not like marshmallows double or single, now and in the future. I'd have eaten them if my life were depending on me eating them.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[argStyopa]

Reaction bias.
In the US, political conservatives have always been the minority.
This has regularly molded the Right into a more organized group, who tend to hold their noses and vote for a candidate who "mostly" represents their views, even if there are specific issues where they strongly disagree. The left side of the political spectrum has been far more fractious, far more regularly divided, and far more prone to fringe candidates (all of which contribute to why a smaller political faction is able to hold its own).

In this system, it's easy to see that people who are on the right are more likely to follow the 'party line' on an issue. They have to, to survive politically.

One note, your post makes it sound like you rate 'climate change' as the gold-standard of scientific truth, denied just by 'crazies'. As one of those 'crazies' who has significant SCIENTIFIC objections to ANTHROPOGENIC climate change theories, I would suggest that's not entirely valid.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[1u3hr]

It's not a science journal, it's the fucking WALL STREET Journal.

What could be the motive behind an article in the Wall Street Journal implying that opponents of fracking are a bunch of superstitious self-deluded fools for opposing this wonderful technology. The same WSJ that periodically "debunks" global warming as a conspiracy.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[dbIII]

Similarly, fracking uses techniques that are already used in normal oil fields. Why haven't these fields experienced such catastrophic consequences?

They are deep.
Recent problems are due to doing stuff close to the surface, close to water and generally doing stupid shit to try to do things quickly under some sort of gold rush mentality. The sort of clowns that drilled in the middle of a lake over the top of a salt mine are still wandering around if it looks like there is a quick profit somewhere. If they can be reigned in (and kept out of shale where a volume expansion and acidic byproduct can cause problems with a lack of care), then it doesn't affect the surface or groundwater.
Also it looks like the poster above thinks faults are great big open deep holes instead of bits of rock sliding on each other under huge pressure. The idea of a volcanic style eruption of deep gas doesn't make any sense, any real geophysicists care to comment?

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[dbIII]

Is the word you are looking for "reactionary"?
US politics is amusing. People can scream "smash the state" and make noises about armed revolution and still call themselves "conservative".

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[dbIII]

What I've seen described as "scientific" objections so far are from economists and a confidence trickster that pretends he has a cure for AIDS as well.
Oh, and there's Plimer, but his objection consists of calling climate scientists a religeon and then going on to mock religeon.

It was all very well established until extreme politics and Pentacostal inspired merchants in the temple got involved when they could see some financial advantage in opposing science.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[tibman]

It isn't paywalled for me either.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[tbannist]

Is to more wrong to think Sarin has no lethal dose or to think that the lethal dose is 5 mg?

After all, the people who think it has no lethal does are "closer" to the actual value, 0.5 mg than the people who think it's 5 mg.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[tbannist]

Or like in Toronto which is constantly teetering on the edge of economic disaster because of liberals who want all the social programs and want someone else to pay for it. So there isn't the money for things that are really needed like new subways (worst subway system for a city its size... evvverrrr).

Actually Toronto has the lowest property taxes of any region in it's area. It's literally less than half the top property tax rate for the region and the current mayor of Toronto is an anti-tax loon. So, Toronto is constantly teetering on the edge of economic disaster because Toronto is constantly freezing property taxes, so that the amount of property tax collected rises at a slower rate than inflation. Thus even without any new programs, their tax revenue base would increase slower than their expenses.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[tbannist]

I'm not sure that conservatives are more organized because they are a minority, it could be that they're more organized because of their fundamental principles. The values that consevatives hold dearest tend to be leadership, tribal identity and conformity. These will all naturally lead to more organized and cohesive action. Liberals, in contrast, tend to value equality and the prevention of harm.

Conservatives chose leades and follow them, anyone who steps out of line is punished, and if they stray too far, forced out of the group. The advantage is it promotes solidarity and the group acts much more cohesively, the disadvantage is that bad leaders can lead the entire group over a cliff.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[ArsonSmith]

I'll stick to 0 Sarin, You go ahead and use up to 4.9mg all you want.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[ArsonSmith]

Wasn't it Rockefeller who said, "To turn any Liberal into a Conservative, just wait 20 years. You don't even have to change any of their ideals."

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[hackula]

Both statements are equally wrong. In science, we try to make precise claims. If we do not know, then we do not guess or approximate without stating that as a stipulation to a claim. Whether or not any particular claim is right or wrong is a binary truth value. There is no "more" or "less".

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[theshowmecanuck]

Similar to: "If you're young and not a liberal you have no heart. If you're old and not a conservative you have no brain." Not my quote, but it's someone's.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[rtb61]

It sounds all reasonable when your talking about one well. Where it all tends to go nothing like the plan, is when it is tens of thousands of wells. Drilled as closely as possible to fully exploit a field yet minimise 'excessive' pressurised fluid from leaking to other drill sites. It's not a single well of several hundred feet, it is many square miles of producing field punctured by hundreds even thousands of wells. It's a gamble, don't forget to privatise the profits and socialise the losses, it's the only way it will work, and the original legislation put out by Cheney insured that this would happen.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[mcgrew]

Whilst the exploiters get raised to the Christian Right, doing greed and exploitation in God's image

Which is ironic, because that's exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught. Yet people who exploit the environment and their fellow man consider themselves to be Christian.

Jesus was a liberal. Caiaphas was a conservative. If you consider yourself both Christian and conservative, you might want to read your bible. If you're rich and consider yourself a Christian, you'd better not because you won't like what you read.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[P-niiice]

Exactly. The choice in that example is one side actually doing something (the degree of remedy is the issue) vs. the other that will do nothing (guaranteed failure).

In the case of nuclear energy, I'm pretty sure a number of liberals would take the batshit side, although true liberal ideals are pretty marginalized these days. I'd be surprised if a majority opposed nuclear energy.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[dr2chase]

I think that there's a whole bunch of liberals who are trying to figure out which of the various evils presented to us is the least, and it's not an easy problem.

The various evils to consider (with wide uncertainty in exactly how evil they are):
- population control
- meaningful conservation
- green energy
- conventional nukes
- breeder nukes
- thorium breeder nukes
- carbon capture
The issue is not how things look in the lab or when practiced by some motivated 1%, but what happens if you scale them up to country-sized deployment. If nothing else, some of these will require a honking big up-front investment.

My impression is that the conservative answer is a combination of gas, oil, coal, and nukes, plus "population control" by limiting immigration, and that they are more certain of their answer.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[doccus]

No, they're NOT equally wrong.. Firstly, I'd point out that I'm *neither* an excessively "open minded" left winger, who will believe absolutely everything put to them that supports their belief system, or a stubbornly *close minded* right-winger, who will believe absolutely everything put to them that supports their belief system.. Although at THIS point they certainly appear equally wrong, there IS a difference.. but not by much.. Conservatived don't want to, and are not able to, in any case, LEARN facts that don't sit well with them.. Left wingers don't want to, and are not able to, BELIEVE facts that don't sit well with them.. ;-)..

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[rhalstead]

Confirmation bias certainly exists throughout the political spectrum. However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end.

I looks to me like it affects both equally, just not on the same things. The Right strongly denies global warming while the left appears to embrace socialism and both appear to be wrong in these instances. Although socialism looks great on paper, it has *always* ended up hurting the middle class and eventually failed. Europe is much worse off than we are financially, but the left is taking us there. with entitlements. The right denies global warming and doing anything to fight it, yet more and more evidence backs up the theory of mankind being the cause this time. Any one of us could probably write volumes of how the two sides differ and reinforce their own beliefs Our medical system needs overhauling. Both sides admit that, but the left wants government sponsored, single payer while the right wants it to be run by private industry. Both sides claim how poor the other side is by cherry picking the evidence. The truth is that no system works perfectly! One of the reasons ours works so well is we have an advanced system, but that is also the reason it is so expensive. We need to get the costs down, not throw out the system. We need to minimize the size of the government and regulation to that that proves necessary, not eliminate either one. Our financial system was working great until the Glass Stegall (sp?) act was repealed. Our financial problems are not due to the system, but rather people breaking the law and cheating the system. We could being back the Glass Steagall act, eliminate the usless regulations, throw out the Dodd/Franct act and make the system transparent. I mentioned entitlements. We need to gradually scale them back and use them where necessary. SS cost me a great deal of money that could have been invested. Had I invested that money instead of giving it, or rather having it take by the government I could have retired in style. Had everyone's SS been invested instead of being put in an account that was robbed by the general fund the country might be in great shape.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[Solandri]

Actually, that suggests the right had a qualitative failure, and the left had a quantitative failure. Wrong magnitude of prediction is a lesser error than complete failure to predict the occurrence of some event.

Ugh. Is this the level of scientific education our schools are churning out today? And modded to +5 insightful? This is the reason why there's so much debate about AGW - because of nonsensical and politically-charged arguments like yours.

Errors in magnitude don't care about sign. If you predict temperatures will go down by 0.3 degrees, and I predict temperatures will go up by 4 degrees, and what actually happens is that temperatures go up by 0.5 degrees, your prediction was considerably more accurate and had a much smaller error in magnitude than my prediction (0.8 degree error vs 3.5 degree error), despite me falling on the correct side of zero while you fell on the wrong side. (There's a small gotcha here with positive feedback mechanisms, since they flip their driving direction depending on which side of the zero you're at. But positive feedback mechanisms are by definition unstable, and the fact that our climate has been variable but stable for billions of years is an indication the negative feedback mechanisms far outweigh the positive feedback mechanisms.)

Qualitative errors are ones which misunderstand the mechanics of what's going on. If I claim temperatures will go up because Gaia is angry that we've stopped caring about her, and temperatures go up, I may be quantitatively correct, but qualitatively completely off my rocker.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[metallurge]

The problem I have with your logic is that it just doesn't work that way.

There are fundamental economic and physical limitations which prevent this hypothetical simultaneous-frac over many square miles. In the real world, there is only so much equipment. Each wellbore (with its engineered casing and cement) can only handle so large of a frac. The zone you hope to produce from is only so thick. Each wellbore is so expensive to create, even before the frac. Each wellbore and each frac takes so much time. There is only so much (fresh) water available locally to do the frac with. And you need to cube your input energy for every increment of additional dimension to the frac, which means also cubing the cost.

All of which means, it's far more correct to think of these as individual wells with small local effects (which dissipate too rapidly to have an aggregate effect).

Now, as far as the public policy stance you take with respect to the immorality of privatizing profit and socializing losses, I'll throw my lot in with you there.

We absolutely need to do a better job of removing the externalities and cost and risk shifting that's endemic to the energy sector. But we'll still be using hydraulic fracturing to produce oil and natural gas from nontraditional reservoirs because we really don't have a choice in the short term. Again, the low-hanging fruit as far as cheap-and-easy-to-produce reservoirs are mostly in the tail of the decline curve. It's surely getting more and more difficult/expensive/risky to produce the fossil fuels that we are going to be depending on for years and years to come, because we apparently don't have the will to do otherwise.

My bottom line is that I don't think the apocalypse is near with respect to hydraulic fracturing. It bears watching, of course. But I'm far far more worried about fresh water supplies and AGW and GMO and income inequality and banking and monetary policy and the shameful state of healthcare and mental healthcare and the fact that our increasingly-authoritarian government appears to be largely coopted by the powers-that-be and the majority of people seem to be effectively propagandized that this is a good thing.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

Relevant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb07yVilJow

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[metallurge]

At least in these parts, there is more than a mile of vertical distance between the hydrocarbon-bearing formation, which is several hundred feet thick, and the deepest fresh water aquifer. Things would have to go really really really wrong for cross-contamination to happen during hydraulic fracturing of deep shale wells. Various estimates of the likelihood of that happening are 1E-8 or less. My informed opinion is that it's "much less".

Good background here. (especially pp. 51-70), which is a joint publication of the Groundwater Protection Council, the DOE, and others.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[randyleepublic]

>> Oil and natural gas are being produced from less-and-less readily available reservoirs. The low-hanging fruit has been picked, as it were, so we have to work harder and harder to produce from less-and-less easy reservoirs. Frac-ing is one of the technologies which makes this possible.

Holy shit! You said a mouthful there. Now think about what your statement means for the future of energy production via fossil fuels. That's correct: the real cost per energy unit is going to rise inexorably. Now think about what that means to civilization. That's correct: if we don't find a way to stabilize the real cost of energy production, we are facing Armageddon. Now thin:k about how we might stabilize the real cost of energy production. That's correct: the only way to do so is to build an energy production infrastructure that does not rely on ever more difficult to recover resources: the two that come to my mind are solar energy and breeder reactors. Now think about what it will take to build that infrastructure. That's correct: a lot of energy - energy that will eventually be so costly that every bit of it will be used just to feed humanity. NOW THINK!

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[metallurge]

Sounds like a recipe for WWIII to me, personally.

But it also means oil and gas reserves are undervalued at today's prices. So go looking for long-term investments in the older oil companies with lots of acreage held by slow-decline domestic production, 'cause you can bet that as completion technologies evolve and new formations become economically producible, and wars and rumors of wars are commonplace, these guys will be in the catbird seat.

Now, if only I were in the ownership class, I could take advantage of that prognostication in a meaningful way...

Oh, you mean we'd all better hope fusion plants become a commercial reality pretty soon, or we're toast? Yep, probably agree with you there.

Or maybe you mean it's time to become a student of R. N. Elliott's work, and start learning about grand supercycles? Check.

Or perhaps you mean it's just about time that more of us find God so that we can have the willpower to do right in an increasingly cutthroat and evil world? Got that one covered personally.

I miss anything?

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[argStyopa]

You believe Al Gore as a credible spokesman (and it was people like you that gave him an Oscar AND a Nobel), yet you dismiss people like Reid Bryson as an economist, a trickster, or "Pentacostal inspired merchant" (whatever the fuck that is)?

Sure, THAT's credible.

BTW Reid Bryson is Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography and of Environmental Studies. Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research, The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (Founding Director), the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Many climatologists regard him as the father of climatology. Professor Bryson calls manmade global warming absurd.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/father-of-climatology-calls-manmade-global-warming-absurd/

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[Stuarticus]

Fascinating, you don't actually mention what any of these radical plans are though, maybe because no-one knows what they are?

"Trust me though, they are going to be awesome."

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[theshowmecanuck]

For one, Toronto is the fifth most expensive city in North America. That was just in the news within the last couple of months. Second, if you are going to claim that Toronto has some of the lowest property taxes, you need to provide a link. Third, regardless, with the price of everything else they have to pay for, Torontonians can't afford more taxes to pay for shite they don't really need, when they really need to fix the 100 year old sewers before they fail and build some realistic transit. And that means subways. Above ground transit won't cut it. It's already at critical mass on the surface. And everything costs too much already.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[tbannist]

For one, Toronto is the fifth most expensive city in North America. That was just in the news within the last couple of months.

Cost of living.

Second, if you are going to claim that Toronto has some of the lowest property taxes, you need to provide a link.

GTA Residential Property Tax Rates

Third, regardless, with the price of everything else they have to pay for, Torontonians can't afford more taxes to pay for shite they don't really need

According to whom? Toronto has been through a decade of yearly budget trimming, there's not much left that "they don't really need". The latest report was trying to convince people that libraries and day care are "gravy" that should be cut.

When they really need to fix the 100 year old sewers before they fail and build some realistic transit. And that means subways.

Strangely enough everyone agrees that subways should be built. The problem is that only some people agree that the subways need to be paid for. The current mayor thinks we should use all existing transit money to build two subway stations.

Above ground transit won't cut it. It's already at critical mass on the surface.

The issue is one of money, the city doesn't have enough money to construct the subways it needs. The province and federal governments are cutting spending, and businesses are hedging their bets against a European recession. Above grade transit increases capacity, even if it doesn't do much to decrease congestion*.

And everything costs too much already.

Ok, grandpa. Want to tell us how you had to walk to school, uphill both ways?

* Studies indicate it will have a temporary congestion reduction which will be consumed by induced traffic in approximately 5 years, but it will increase the actual number of commuters which can be transported by the infrastructure.

Re:Motiviated reasoning?

[nedlohs]

Except that a lethal dose of 0mg doesn't mean "no lethal dose", that would mean everyone is already dead from it or at least that a trace amount would kill you. It means +inf mg, or pick a ridiculously large number because filling yourself with 5000 kg of nitrogen will also kill you.

5mg is closer to 0.5mg than 5000000000mg is, so yes the guy saying no lethal dose is "more wrong".

Ladies and gentlemen

[fustakrakich]

we're screwed

One Sided science

[jmorris42]

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.

Re:One Sided science

[drooling-dog]

When some of us question the shaky science of AGW we are called anti-science, 'deniers' and worse

Then perhaps you'd be well advised to start making formal scientific arguments in the peer-reviewed literature, rather than going through public relations firms hired to appeal directly to the public. If the data is on your side, then work it up to the same standards as everyone else and present it. Unless you do that, it's not science.

Or, like the GOP, you could just claim that more research is needed before actionable conclusions are made, all the while trying to cut funding for the very research you say we have too little of.

Re:One Sided science

[MightyMartian]

The problem here is that reality doesn't give a fuck about middle ground or accommodation. If AGW is happening, and the vast majority of experts say it is, then you're rather disingenuous attempt at being "reasonable" is utterly worthless in the long run.

Re:One Sided science

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not possible, there is NO peer revied science for AGW. Phil Jones, at the CRU, deleted the orginial data before he risked others viewing his data and methods. He ignored FOI requests for years for the data to peer review. He also admitted to not being able to prove global warming was happeing despite, as he said, manipulating that data to prove such and keeping his data and methods secret. All the IPCC reports, and everything else in the AGW science relm is based on the manipulted data from Phil Jones.

There is no possibility of disputing it on facts because he deleted the data because he considered peer review a threat to his work.

How about you tell me where I'm wrong above or stop calling people who actually know more than you names. If the, as you say, "data is on your side" then we whould have seen it instead of watch it be deleted by the truckload.

Re:One Sided science

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh...this has been completely debunked. Go put on your tinfoil hat and sit in the corner and whine about how the jews did wtc if you don't care to educate yourself about the world around you. The data was not manipulated and was cleared of all wrongdoing.

Re:One Sided science

[arthurpaliden]

Yep the science of AGW is so shaky that the CEO of Exxon admits it is real.

Re:One Sided science

[Anonymous Coward]

If the data is on your side, then work it up to the same standards as everyone else and present it.

It has been, several times. You do realize that several prominent universities in China and Japan have been unable to reproduce several of the most damning claims of AGW research to date including Mann and Briffa's work. It's received no attention inside American or European scientific circles.

That cold silence should tell you quite a bit about the state of AGW research. And the culture of collusion that's going on.

Re:One Sided science

[drooling-dog]

Well, I guess you just stumbled into the Great Liberal Conspiracy that all scientists are required to join before they are granted their PhDs. Why anybody puts any credence in them when ExxonMobil's PR firms are saying something completely different is beyond me.

Seriously, though... Taking a potshot at this data point or that, or citing professional rivalries between climatologists (re: "climategate") isn't going to be enough. It's like pointing to a "gap" in the fossil record and calling it a flaw in the theory of evolution. If you have the requisite training and can produce a bona fide model that takes the body of existing data and produces a different result, then maybe you have something. A Nobel prize even, if one was awarded in climatology. If you've done this, then I'd like to see the citation. Surely there is at least one reputable peer-reviewed journal that isn't part of the great conspiracy and would publish a solid paper that makes a convincing argument.

Re:One Sided science

[williamhb]

Then perhaps you'd be well advised to start making formal scientific arguments in the peer-reviewed literature, rather than going through public relations firms hired to appeal directly to the public. If the data is on your side, then work it up to the same standards as everyone else and present it. Unless you do that, it's not science.

Sorry to use you as a data point, but half the issue is in public policy debates (which are the very definition of politics), "science" becomes a very slippery term. When someone wants to argue for something, the goalposts widen and almost anything is science (usually together with rallying cries of how great science is -- "science gave us the toaster, television, put a man on the moon. ..." -- quietly drafting the engineers, product designers, anything vaguely technical as being "science"). But when someone wants to argue against something, the goalposts narrow and we insist on journal publications, and which journal ("of course not the Journal of Field I Think is Flawed").

Fundamentally, these debates put the cart before the horse. Slashdotters and others like to insist that "if it's science, policy should follow it" -- ie that science has a right to have more impact. In academia (currently the home of science) however, impact is a metric not a right. Whether your science has impact is a measure of its value and you have no automatic right to people listening to you whatsoever, regardless of where you are published.

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

And I await, with breathless anticipation, the day that many of the AGW deniers can actually form a cogent argument and start to refute the underlying mathematical models, e.g.,

J. M. Murphy, et al., "Quantification of modelling uncertainties in a large ensemble of climate change simulations", Nature 430: 768-772, 2004
J. M. Murphy, et al., "A methodology for probabilistic predictions of regional climate change from perturbed physics ensembles", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365: 1993-2028, 2007
D. A. Stainforth, et al., "Confidence, uncertainty and decision-support relevance in climate predictions", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365: 2145-2161, 2007
P. A. Stott and C. E. Forest, "Ensemble climate predictions using climate models and observational constraints", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365: 2029-2052, 2007
C. Tebaldi and R. Knutti, "The use of the multi-model ensemble in probabilistic climate projections", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365: 2053-2075, 2007
J. D. Annan and J. C. Hargreaves, "Efficient estimation and ensemble generation in climate modelling", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365: 2077-2088, 2007
M. New, et al., "Challenges in using probabilistic climate change information for impact assessments: An example from the water sector", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365: 2117-2131, 2007
H. Huebener, et al. "Ensemble climate simulations using a fully coupled ocean–troposphere–stratosphere general circulation model", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 365: 2089-2101, 2007
S. H. Schneider and M. D. Mastrandrea, "Probabilistic assessment of 'dangerous' climate change and emissions pathways", Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 102: 15728-15735, 2005
F. Giorgi and R. Francisco, "Evaluating uncertainties in the prediction of regional climate change", Geophys. Res. Lett 27: 1295-1298, 2000
M. R. Allen and W. J. Ingram, "Constraints on future changes in climate and the hydrological cycle", Nature 419, 224-232, 2002
M. R. Allen, et al., Quantifying the uncertainty in forecasts of anthropogenic climate change", Nature 417: 617-620, 2000
F. Giorgi and L. O. Mearns, "Probability of regional climate change based on the Reliability Ensemble Averaging (REA) method", Geophys. Res. Lett. 30: 1629, 2003
N. G. Andronova and M. E. Schlesinger, "Objective estimation of the probability density function for climate sensitivity", J. Geophys. Res. 106: 22605-22612, 2001
C. E. Forest, et al., "Quantifying uncertainties in climate system properties with the use of recent climate observations", Science 295: 113-117, 2002
R. Knutti, et al., "Constraints on radiative forcing and future climate change from observations and climate model ensembles", Nature 416: 719-723, 2002
J. Gregory, et al., "An observationally based estimate of the climate sensitivity", J. Clim. 15: 3117-3121, 2002
R. J. Stouffer and S. Manabe, "Response of a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide: sensitivity to the rate of increase", J. Clim. 12: 2224-2237, 1999
D. A. Stainforth, et al., "Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases", Nature 433: 403-406, 2005
J. Reilly, et al., "Uncertainty in climate change assessments", Science 293: 430-433, 2001
V. D. Pope, et al., "The impact of new physical parameterisations in the Hadley Centre climate model - HadAM3", Clim. Dyn. 16: 123–146, 2000
K. D. Williams, et al., "Transient climate change in the Hadley centre models: The role of physical processes" J. Clim. 14: 2659–2674 2001
G. C. Hegerl, et al., "Climate sensitivity constrained by temperature reconstructions over the past seven centuries", Nature 440: 1029-1032, 2006
C. Piani, et al., "Constraints on climate change from a multi-thousand member ensemble of simulations", Geophys. Res. Lett. 32: L32825, 2005
D. N. Barnett, et al., "Quantifying uncertainty in changes in extreme event frequency in response to doubled CO2 using a large ensemble of GCM simulations", Clim. Dyn. 26: 489-511, 2006
C. Tebaldi and B. Sanso, "Joint project

Re:One Sided science

[drooling-dog]

So one guy controls all of the climate data ever collected, and the state of the entire field of climatology depends on his analysis? That's unadulterated horse shit and possibly the most idiotic thing I've heard this week. I don't care if you can find a climatologist that eats puppies raw for breakfast: It's nothing but character assassination, and whether it's warranted or not it's not a scientific argument. There's plenty of data out there. If you can build a convincing model with it, then just goddamn do it. The whole field will thank you for it.

Re:One Sided science

[MrHanky]

Which semi-reputable idiots on the AGW team are you talking about? Citation needed, etc.

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

I'd be willing to settle for the comment (or, potentially, original research) papers sent to the journal(s) editors.

Also, as someone who has written comment papers for Science, Nature, and PNAS, I can say that the reviewers are accepting, considering that science is an ongoing pursuit, provided you can present reasonable claims. For example, aside from the recent bout of arsenic-based life papers, i.e., M. L. Reaves, et al., "Absence of detectable arsenate in DNA from arsenate-grown GFAJ-1 cells", Science, 2012 (accepted, in press) and T. J. Erb, et al., "GFAJ-1 is an arsenate-resistant, phosphate-dependent organism", Science 2012 (accepted, in press), a semi-controversial topic, at least in geoscience, is the existence of the Younger Dryas impact event:

R. B. Firestone, et al., "Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling", PNAS 104: 16016-16021, 2007
D. J. Kennett, et al., "Nanodiamonds in the Younger Dryas boundary sediment layer", Science 323: 94, 2009
T. E. Bunch, et al., "Very high-temperature impact melt products as evidence for cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago", PNAS 109: E1903-E1912, 2012

i.e., a large impact or airburst some 12.9 Ka wiped out the Clovis people, a large number of species, etc.

Although, initially, the hypothesis had merit, several researchers have since shown that many of the original conclusions are unsupported:

F. S. Paquay, et al., "Absence of geochemical evidence for an impact event at the Bølling-Allerød/Younger Dryas transition", PNAS 106: 21505-21510, 2009
T. L. Daulton, et al., "No evidence of nanodiamonds in Younger-Dryas sediments to support an impact event", PNAS 107: 16043-16047, 2010
T. Surovell, et al., "An independent evaluation of the Younger Dryas extraterrestrial impact hypothesis", PNAS 106: 18155-18158, 2010
H. Tian, et al., "Nanodiamonds do not provide unique evidence for a Younger Dryas impact", PNAS 108: 40-44, 2011
J. S. Pigati, et al., "Accumulation of impact markers in desert wetlands and implications for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis", PNAS 109: 7208-7212, 2012
A. van Hoesel, et al., "Nanodiamonds and wildfire evidence in the Usselo horizon postdate the Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary", PNAS 109: 7648-7653, 2012

(see also: J. R. Marlon, et al., "Wildfire responses to abrupt climate change in North America", PNAS 106: 2519-2524, 2009
A. L. Westerling, et al., "Warming and earlier spring increase western US forest wildfire activity", Science 313: 940-943, 2006
T. W. Swetnam, "Fire history and climate change in giant sequoia groves", Science 262: 885-889, 1993
A. Hubbe, et al., "Early Holocene survival of megafauna in South America". J. Biogeography 34: 1642-1646, 2007
A. J. Stuart, et al., "Pleistocene to Holocene extinction dynamics in giant deer and woolly mammoth". Nature 431: 684-689, 2004
J. L. Gill, et al., "Pleistocene megafaunal collapse, novel plant communities, and enhanced fire regimes in North America". Science 326: 1100-1103, 2009)

In all of these cases, the authors were able to provide counter-proposals to some of the evidence that satisfied the journal reviewers, e.g., H. Tian, et al. showed that the existence of nanodiamonds alone does not provide sufficient evidence for a Younger Dryas impact, as nanodiamonds can be deposited by stellar dust (Z. R. Dai, et al., "Possible in situ formation of meteoritic nanodiamonds in the early solar system", Nature 418: 157-159, 2002; N. A. Marks, et al., "Nonequilibrium route to nanodiamond with astrophysical implications", Phys. Rev. Lett. 108: 075503, 2012), formed in charred wood (F. Banhart and P. M. Ajayan, "Carbon onions as nanoscopic pressure cells for diamond formation", Nature 382: 433-435, 1996), etc., while, van Hoesel showed that nanodiamonds in sediment layers from multiple areas postdate the Younger Dryas boundary.

Re:One Sided science

[brendank310]

Well, I guess you just stumbled into the Great Liberal Conspiracy that all scientists are required to join before they are granted their PhDs.

Dude you weren't supposed to tell anyone.

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

The editors of the literature are just as politicized and refuse to publish studies that say the earth is not warming, or that the earth is warming, but still a lot cooler than 2000 years ago.

I laughed really hard at this comment, considering this paper was posted a while back: J. Esper, et al., "Orbital forcing of tree-ring data", Nature Clim. Change, 2012 (accepted, in press). (I'm sure that the editors at Nature are quickly moving to reject the article in light of your comment, lest they be accused of favoring concrete evidence over their own opinions.)

Re:One Sided science

[drooling-dog]

The journals and their readers absolutely love a good scientific controversy, and the citations you give are good examples of that. But, all sides are required to be equally rigorous in their treatment of data and the construction of their arguments, no exceptions. Anyone who can't manage to do that is likely to go away mumbling about politics and conspiracies, as we've seen here.

Re:One Sided science

[Anonymous Coward]

... and start to refute the underlying mathematical models...

Which one? The models keep getting changed every time the predictions fail to match what the climate is actually doing. Models that take temperature data across a range of years and return temperature predictions for dates within that range just prove that you have a good curve-fitting algorithm. Being able to match actual recorded temperatures prior to the start of your data set, and accurately predict temperatures after the end of your data set, is the proof of correctness of a model. The constant revision of the climate models as the climate fails to follow the predictions tells me that the models are wrong, and their failure to model historical data preceding their input data again shows the limitations of the models. Climate change is happening, but the 'proof' that human activity is driving that change is exceedingly questionable.

Re:One Sided science

[drooling-dog]

Ummm... You assert that editors of peer-reviewed journals are refusing to publish quality papers, but you support this assertion by referring to "leftist friends" who post on Facebook, ignoring studies claiming that "fracking is not bad". That doesn't even make sense.

Was there ever a time when the mean global temperature was warmer than it is today, and even warmer than most models project it will be by the end of this century? Of course there was, and for millions of years. What's your point?

No study will ever show that "fracking is always bad" or "fracking is always good" because good and bad are not scientifically defined concepts. Fracking may have repercussions (like seismicity or groundwater contamination) in some instances and not others, depending on the specific geological formations and other factors. The research you'll see will mostly be aimed at characterizing those effects and identifying the situations (if any) in which they are likely to occur. I'm not a geologist or hydrologist, so I have no horse in this race intellectually. But if there is real chance of adverse effects, I'd like to see that investigated before they start fracking underneath my town. At the very minimum, the companies involved should be able to secure sufficient insurance to settle any claims if something goes awry, and insurance companies will need to know how to price those risks.

Re:One Sided science

[bky1701]

I am still pissed no one has invited me yet. I'm an atheist, pretty left wing, a chemical engineering student, bisexual, and a few other things that the internet tells me have global conspiracies, and the only one I am in so far is being a Brony!

Re:One Sided science

[drooling-dog]

Well, you're just wrong about that. "Science" is not some oracle out of the Wizard of Oz that pronounces on the truth and falsehood of things. I don't know a single scientist who thinks that way, and I've known quite a few.

But you're right about not expecting science - or reason - to be a universal value that dictates (or even informs) policy. Politics is about balancing interests, and the weight of an interest is measured in dollars, not papers. I've heard people say that Republicans are scientifically illiterate, but I don't think that's true at all, at least not at the top. The GOP rejects science and reason not because they're ignorant, but because once you commit to a rational basis for government, your power is immediately diminished. Real power is power you can exercise arbitrarily, according to the side your toast is buttered on at the moment. You don't want a bunch of eggheads with their studies forcing your hand in one direction when the big money wants something else. We've been through this with the tobacco industry, we're going through it now with the fossil energy industry, and we'll go through it again with other moneyed interests.

The petroleum industry can afford to hire all of the scientists they want and more, but they know that won't get them the results they need. So why not just knock science off of its pedestal completely, in the eyes of the public?

Re:One Sided science

[jmorris42]

> The data was not manipulated and was cleared of all wrongdoing.

That would be a neat trick since the key raw data at CRU was destroyed.

So we have nothing left but "trust me" to decide to redirect a very sizable portion of world production into a project that just happens, total coincidence btw, to be exactly what socialists have been demanding we do for most of the 20th Century.

Way I see it is if we give in we get world socialism which would result in the Hell on Earth that has occurred every single place it has been tried as Option one. Option two is to tell the eco nuts to FOAD and we guessed right that it was a scam. Good times. Option three is they were both wicked and right, which means a future that is going to suck. But it would take a pretty vivid imagination of think of a eco doom worse than socialism, especially since we would have a robust economy to pay for mitigation or geoengineering.

So try to reason me out of that decision. Namecalling won't do it, in case you haven't noticed your team is losing the PR war and the shrill "you fools are going to DIE" stuff just sounds desperate at this point in the debate. Show me a higher probablility of things being worse on a warmed earth than the probability of death camps, mass graves, poverty, war, etc. that have always marked the terminal stages of socialism. The Earth has neen much warmer than today and much cooler. Life would be different but it would be life and we would be Free.

Re:One Sided science

[drooling-dog]

The "problem here" is that the AGW crowd has been politicizing this thing since before many of us were even born and now they're shocked, dismayed, and angered that people ask for the data.

No. This became political when the fossil energy industry threw their money at PR firms for the explicit purpose of making it political, largely through ad hominem attacks on individual scientists. That gets funneled through the usual conservative commentators and blogosphere, and that's why you believe what you do. If there were a strong scientific case to make, the industry would hire all of the scientists it takes to make it. But they don't. It's easier to fool the public with conspiracy theories and tales of evil scientists who are somehow hell-bent to undermine our god-given dependance on fossil fuels.

For goodness sake just listen to yourself sometime.

Re:One Sided science

[riverat1]

Its not possible, there is NO peer reviewed science for AGW ... blah-blah-blah

Same AC (I assume) has made remarkably similar posts on other /. stories related to AGW. Probably best not to feed this troll.

Re:One Sided science

[riverat1]

Which one? The models keep getting changed every time the predictions fail to match what the climate is actually doing.

Are you saying we should just adapt one final climate model and refrain from improving it when new evidence comes along?

It appears you fundamentally misunderstand climate models, thinking they're statistical models doing curve fitting rather than the physical models that they are. Here's a couple of FAQ's to help enlighten you:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

I hope you realize that these (perturbed-physics ensemble) models are doing far more than "simple" interpolation and extrapolation of temperature values.

To elaborate, uncertainties or errors in numerical models limit the utility of projections from any individual model. As a result, ensemble approaches have been proposed in an attempt to estimate the uncertainty in short-term predictions (F. Molteni, et al., "The ECMWF ensemble predictions system: Methodology and validation", Quart. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 122: 73-119, 2006), which work by first measuring the prediction uncertainties and then tracing them back to model biases and errors.

Of course, a component of any projection system should be a suite of models that sample natural variability, forcing uncertainty and uncertainties in the underlying physical processes which drive regional and global climate change. Two approaches that have been adopted in recent years are the ensemble-of-opportunity (G. A. Meehl, et al., "The WCRP CMIP3 multimodel dataset: A new era in climate change research", Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 88: 1383-1394, 2007) and the perturbed-physics ensemble (J. M. Murphy, et al., "Quantification of modelling uncertainties in a large ensemble of climate change simulations", Nature 430: 768-772, 2004), with the latter being preferred.

One of the key strengths of the perturbed physics approach is the ability to produce a large number of ensemble members in a relatively easy way, as it is possible to control the experimentation and systematically explore uncertainties in processes and feedbacks. For example, it is possible to produce a set of experiments where the input forcing data is the same in each experiment, but the parameters which control, say, the climate sensitivity of the model are varied, which allows for different sources of uncertainty to be isolated. As well, it is possible to explore a wide range of feedback processes in the model by de-tuning it, potentially revealing the impact of previous compensating errors; such de-tuning can ameliorate the potential for double-counting when constraining the models with observations, i.e., the assigning of a relative likelihood to different model versions based on observed data that has been used in their development.

To give some specifics, the model employed by Murphy, et al. uses a total of 31 parameters, e.g., mid-top thin cloud percent, low-top thin cloud percent, zonal mean relative humidity cloud percent, sea-ice extent, outgoing SW radiation at TOA, diurnal temperature range, latent heat flux, mean sea level pressure, and climate prediction index, with perturbations done to a single parameter at a time, either to the minimum or maximum of the range specified in consultation with modeling experts/the literature or on/off. This resulted in 53 different model versions, including the standard parameter setting as defined by Gordon et al. ("The simulation of SST, sea ice extents and ocean heat transport in a version of the Hadley Centre coupled model without flux adjustments", Clim. Dyn. 16: 147-168, 2000) and Pope et al. ("The impact of new physical parameterizations in the Hadley Centre climate model-HadAM3", Clim. Dyn. 16: 123-146, 2000). Further, in this design, if a perturbation in one physical scheme has an impact on a process or model variable that is also related to another there can be no compensation achieved by perturbing a related parameter, as might be done in the model development process. As a result, this single-perturbation approach can be thought of as the simplest form of model de-tuning (T. F. Stocker, "Climate change: Models change their tune", Nature 430: 737-738, 2004), in that there is no attempt to a priori maximize the model performance when compared to observations (it should be stressed that no systematic tuning of model performance was done to produce the standard parameter settings).

Later on, however, others moved to simultaneous perturbation (M. J. Webb, et al., "On the contribution of local feedback mechanisms to

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

As for your second point, i.e., that there is "exceedingly questionable" proof that human activity is driving climate change, feel free to peruse this, rather incomplete, list of references:

N. P. Gillet, et al., "Attribution of polar warming to human influence", Nature Geosci. 1: 750-754, 2008
J. C. Neff, et al., "Increasing eolian dust deposition in the western United States linked to human activity", Nature Geosci. 1: 189-195, 2008
J. R. Marlon, et al., "Climate and human influences on global biomass burning over the past two millennia", Nature Geosci. 1: 697-702, 2008
R. D. Field, et al., "Human amplification of drought-induced biomass burning in Indonesia since 1960", Nature Geosci. 2: 185-188, 2009
G. Hegerl, et al., "Influence of human and natural forcing on European seasonal temperatures", Nature Geosci. 5: 99-103, 2011
P. J. Gleckler, et al., "Human-induced global ocean warming on multidecadal timescales", Nature Clim. Change 2: 524-529, 2012
T. Friedrich, et al., "Detecting regional anthropogenic trends in ocean acidification against natural variability", Nature Clim. Change 2: 167-171, 2012
M. Huber and R. Knutti, Anthropogenic and natural warming inferred from changes in Earth’s energy balance", Nature Geosci. 5: 31-36, 2012
T. Ito, et al., "Anthropogenic carbon dioxide transport in the Southern Ocean driven by Ekman flow", Nature 463: 80-83, 2010
P. Pall, et al., "Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000", Nature 470: 382-385, 2011
S. Khatiwala, et al., "Reconstruction of the history of anthropogenic CO2 concentrations in the ocean", Nature 462: 346-349, 2009
D. J. Cziczo, et al., "Inadvertent climate modification due to anthropogenic lead", Nature Geosci. 2: 333-336, 2009
C. Rosenzweig, et al., "Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change", Nature 453: 353-357, 2008
P. Bousquet, et al., "Contribution of anthropogenic and natural sources to atmospheric methane variability", Nature 443: 439-443, 2006
G. A. Vecchi, et al., "Weakening of tropical Pacific atmospheric circulation due to anthropogenic forcing", Nature 441: 73-76, 2006
K. Caldeira and M. E. Wickett, "Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH", Nature 425:365, 2003
K. Caldeira and M. E. Wickett, "Ocean model predictions of chemistry changes from carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and ocean", J. Geophys. Res. 110:C09S04, 2005
J. C. Orr, et al., "Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the 21st century and its impact on calcifying organisms", Nature 437: 681-686, 2005
C. L. Sabine, et al., "The oceanic sink for anthropogenic CO2", Science 305:367-371, 2004
H. O. Portner, "Climate change affects marine fishes through the oxygen limitation of thermal tolerance", Science 315:95-97, 2007
H. O. Portner, "Climate change and temperature dependent biogeography: Oxygen limitation and thermal tolerance in animals", Naturwissenschaften 88:137-146, 2001
R. A. Feely, et al., "Impact of anthropogenic CO2 on the CaCO3 system in oceans", Science 305:362-366, 2004
Y. Liu and P. H. Daum, "Anthropogenic aerosols: Indirect warming effect from dispersion forcing", Nature 419: 580-581, 2002
T.-H. P. Rik, et al., "Quantification of decadal anthropogenic CO2 uptake in the ocean based on dissolved inorganic carbon measurements", Nature 396: 560-563, 1998
I. N. Sokolik and O. B. Toon, "Direct radiative forcing by anthropogenic airborne mineral aerosols", Nature 381: 681-683, 1996
A. Jones, et al., "A climate model study of indirect radiative forcing by anthropogenic sulphate aerosols", Nature 370: 450-453, 1994
D. L. Sahagian, et al., "Direct anthropogenic contributions to sea level rise in the twentieth century ", Nature 367: 54-57, 1994
J. Langner, et al., "Anthropogenic influence on the distribution of tropospheric sulphate aerosol", Nature 359: 712-716, 1992
P. G. Falkowski and C. Wilson, "Phytoplankton productivity in the North Pacific ocean since 1900 and implicati

Re:One Sided science

[silentcoder]

>. But it would take a pretty vivid imagination of think of a eco doom worse than socialism, especially since we would have a robust economy to pay for mitigation or geoengineering.

Really now ? Too bad that the vast majority of the damage predicted is also predicted to hit the poorest places on earth. Ironically the places that have contributed to the least to the cause of the problem will suffer the worst of it's effects.

So where the money will be needed, they don't and probably won't, have robust economies to pay for anything with. Which means the rich world which caused the problem in the first place will have to foot the bill.

But I don't think the anti-AGW crowd has any intention of doing so if they turn out to be wrong, indeed I believe they are relying on it. "After all, if we ARE wrong - it won't really be OUR problem anyway, who cares if a bunch of African Niggers get drowned".

Re:One Sided science

[catmistake]

No study will ever show that "fracking is always bad" or "fracking is always good" because good and bad are not scientifically defined concepts.

The first question always on my mind and is never, ever addressed... why can't they just use water? Why must it always be tremendously poisonous water they like to call "fracking fluid?" What's the downside to not using poisonous water and just using regular fresh water instead? Is there a risk that fresh water might poison wells, too?

Re:One Sided science

[Moofie]

Team? There are teams?

"Hell, semi reputable idiots on the AGW team actually say we should be outlawed or otherwised silenced."

Uh, can I have a cite please?

Re:One Sided science

[sumdumass]

Actually, he is right to a degree. The raw data to a lot of the base studies which is primarily used for all global warming research was deleted which created a firestorm because it was the subject of numerous FOI requests. The raw data is manipulated on purpose to normalize the output into something useful. This manipulation process is missing too.

What the op is referring to is this and how it is impossible to recreate the raw numbers and check the normalization processes. No other data set can prove or disprove the original or even the studies created from it and studies that were built on it because they simply won't match. The concealment of this and denial to release it lasted so long that the majority of the IPCC work done is based around studies that reference the results of that data and process.

I disagree with the op's position though as eventually, even with faulty starting or reference data, the theory can be supported or proven wrong. It will take a large amount of time to collect enough contrasting data to get something useful though.

Re:One Sided science

[sFurbo]

The point of fracking is to make small fractures in the oil and gas carrying rock to allow them to flow to the bore-hole. These cracks are made by injecting high-pressure fluid, mostly water. However, in order to get the oil/gas out, you need to remove the pressure. That will make the cracks close. To avoid this, sand is mixed with the water to keep the cracks open. However, for this to work, the sand must get in to the cracks, which means that the water must get in to the cracks. Water has a high surface tension, so if no surfactants are added, the water will not get very far into the cracks, so the sand will not get very far into the cracks, so the cracks will mostly close when the pressure is removed, so the fracking will not be very effective.

The additives also do other things, such as controlling the viscosity.

Another point is that it wouldn't thelp very much to use pure water. When the pressure is removed, a lot of the water which was put down into the bore hole will come up again. Most of this will have been in contact with oil-containing rocks, and will be polluted with oil. So even if you put pure water down, you will not get pure water up.

Re:One Sided science

[Vintermann]

Step out from your anonymous cowardice, and publish your detailed, lengthy critiques somewhere we can see them?

Professional hubris, along with the famous Dunning-Kruger effect (beyond a certain level of incompetence, people know so little that they fail to realize they're incompetent), means that scientific journals get lots and lots of junk. Unless we see your papers, we can't know, and have to go by the default assumption that you're clueless (since most would-be paradigm changing papers are rejected for good reasons).

Re:One Sided science

[Vintermann]

Bullshit. Even if there was important, unreconstructable data deleted at UEA (which I doubt), their climate data set is just one out of the four major ones. It will not take "a large amount of time to collect enough contrasting data to get something useful", because climate data from the last 100 years is extremely plentiful and detailed.

You're just peddling delayer talking points.

Re:One Sided science

[blitziod]

Don't forget that big gas would prefer most green policies and profit huge as opposed to coal companies and that big money( wall street) would make a bundle( as woul al gore) of trading carbon credits. Yes scientists agree the globe has warmed. After that "consensus" gets a little thin. the debate is how much warmer will it get and how much a role does human activity, ESP c02 play in that warming. And untill the satellite data agrees with the climate models, I think it is safe to say it is not settled. Btw if you look at the Ippc data in the report you will see that most of the claims( flooding etc) are exaggerations. While the political section of the report may sound very alarmist, the actual science parts are much less so.

Re:One Sided science

[sumdumass]

Fuck dude, just do a damn google search for the information. This isn't anything new and it isn't anything denied by the scientists involved. the data lost is raw data, it is different then the data being used in the studies because part of the process is actually manipulating the data in a process called normalizing it. What is lost is what data was actually used from the source data and how it went from raw data to a normalized set that can be useful. A Programmer at CRU attempted to recreate it and gave up in frustration claiming it was impossible.

You are right, there are other data sets available and as I already said, using those sets can not be used to verify the CRU data as they all reproduce difference points in their results. The CRU data is important because it is behind 90% of everything the IPCC used in its analysis. It will take years before enough data it collected to be directly applied against the CRU data.

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

[...] which clearly shows that the increased water vapour required by the AGW hypothesis doesn't exist.

T. Vonder Haar has previously stated that the preliminary NVAP data cannot disprove a trend in global water vapor either positive or negative, according the null hypothesis; this is also mentioned in the paper you referenced: "The results of Figs. 1 and 4 have not been subjected to detailed global or regional trend analyses, which will be a topic for a forthcoming paper. Such analyses must account for the changes in satellite sampling discussed in the supplement. Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data." As such, your claims are currently unjustified.

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

Impossible when the AGW people control the "peer reviewed literature" and collude to keep out papers that disagree with AGW [...]

The AGW people control the literature as much as officials at the Pentagon wield influence over the US populace with their secret mind control machines.

As I mentioned in my above post, the editors at places like Science, Nature, PNAS, etc., will publish skeptical papers if you can provide sound evidence and/or reasoning to support your claims, let alone a solid empirical validation protocol,. As an example, Nature was willing to publish a paper by Jacques Benveniste ("Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE", Nature 333: 816-818, 1988), which basically proved the existence of homeopathy, provided that the results could be replicated by independent laboratories. Another is the paper by Targ and Puthoff ("Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding", Nature 251: 602-607, 1974) about the self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller.

[...] which was one of the things exposed by all those leaked climate emails

The emails between Mann and Jones (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=295&filename=1047388489.txt) were talking about the flawed paper by W. Soon and S. Baliunas ("Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years", Clim. Res. 23: 89-110, 2003) and how Mann, and others, should boycott Climate Research until one of their editors got his act together.

To put things in perspective, if papers that would normally go to the Journal of Creation or Creation Research Society Quarterly, e.g., those with wonderful claims like:

"According to Genesis, trees were created on the third day of the Creation Week. Within a Biblical worldview, this suggests that they are discontinuous with other plant forms. Naturalists posit that trees arose by random processes from simpler photosynthetic organisms. Fossil evidence for tree evolution from putative non-tree precursors is evaluated. It is concluded that the fossil record does not support an evolutionary origin for trees from non-tree plant forms. The earliest trees found in the fossil record were well developed, and no plausible explanation exists to overcome the enormous odds against their evolutionary origins from single-celled ancestors. It is concluded that when the fossil record, tree ecology, global Flood, and complex biochemical systems are analyzed within a Biblical worldview, the data are consistent with the Genesis account that God directly created trees."

and:

"Experiments co-sponsored by the Creation Research Society show that helium leakage deflates radioisotopic ages. In 1982 Robert Gentry found amazingly high retentions of nuclear-decay-generated helium in microscopic zircons (ZrSiO4 crystals) recovered from a borehole in hot Precambrian granitic rock at Fenton Hill, NM. We contracted with a high-precision laboratory to measure the rate of helium diffusion out of the zircons. The initial results were very encouraging. Here we report newer zircon diffusion data that extend to the lower temperatures (100 to 277 C) of Gentry's retention data. The measured rates resoundingly confirm a numerical prediction we made based on the reported retentions and a young age. Combining rates and retentions gives a helium diffusion age of 6,000 ± 2,000 years. This contradicts the uniformitarian age of 1.5 billion years based on nuclear decay products in the same zircons. These data strongly support our hypothesis of episodes of highly accelerated nuclear decay occurring within thousands of years ago. Such accelerations shrink the radioisotopic 'billions of years' down to the 6,000-year timescale of the Bible."

started to appear, en masse, in actual, top-tier research journals, I'd boycott those in a heartbeat for purposefully allowing junk science built purely on hand waving, false assertions, and/or overtly flawed experimental methodologies to be published.

Re:One Sided science

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, since everyone seems to have abandoned themselves to the emotional discussion there are the simple facts on Fracking
(1) It represents pumping underground between 10 and 20 Acre feet of solution and sand into an area usually in the order of about 20 to 40 acres in area. This jacks up the land by about 0.5 feet. This definitely "fractures" hense the term "fracking" the rocks breaking the "impermiable barriers" involved. This is done with massive pressures in the order of 45,000psi.
(2) Fracking is massively more efficient for recovery of natural gas and oil.
(3) Fracking does cause earthquakes during the process typically in the order of 4.0 but has been higher. Sites in Arkansas have been shut down from too many earthquakes. Having nearly 10,000 in one year.
(4) Fracking isn't necessarily bad or good and highly varies in effect from location to location. That is some locations have no problems many other locations have problems.
(5) By the industry's own reports they estimate that Fracking will destroy 50% of the ground water resources of North America in the next 5 years polluting them beyond use without use of heavy purification technologies. This is why the oilmen have invested heavily in water purification technologies so that they can profit from the cities and towns and individuals who need drinking water to replace the pollution destroyed sources they have.
(6) The Fracking advocates plan to extract and export most of US production. This means the USA will get a trivial amount of resources in return for massive cost.
(7) The Fracking process is very likely doing very serious damage to the actual geological structures rendering much of the hydrocarbon lost by this damage. It is probably true that fracking is causing the loss of much of the USA resources on a perminant basis.

Now people seem to be reading this issue on the basis of some political bias. None of what I just said has anything to do with any bias. It is just from the investment and technical papers of the industry. It isn't even written by critics of the industry. It is in fact what the industry is saying internally.

Re:One Sided science

[Vintermann]

Doesn't that stink?

It would, if it were true. But there are a lot of other things that stink.

Nice Godwin, by the way. I happen to have an interest in that topic, and the main problem with eugenicists wasn't that they falsified data (although they sometimes did that too), but that they failed to recognise their corruption and extreme conflict of interest in putting themselves up as judges of which humans/human traits were desirable or not. Their problem was in the moral philosophy department primarily, rather than the biology or statistics department.

Re:One Sided science

[Vintermann]

> part of the process is actually manipulating the data in a process called normalizing it.

Ooh, technical language! I don't understand what normalizing means, so what you say probably makes sense... oh wait. I do, and it doesn't.

Re:One Sided science

[sumdumass]

And as I said, google it. It isn't a big fucking secret.

Or sit there in denial and wonder why you have to go around defending something that you cannot understand due to lack of complete information.

Re:One Sided science

[jmorris42]

> Uh, can I have a cite please?

Google is your friend. I am feeling generous though so I'll give you a couple to start ya out.

"Speaking at the American leg of Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies." Referring to skeptics of manmade global warming, he said, "This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors." Traitors are either shot or imprisoned. I wonder which Robert Kennedy has in mind for the skeptics."

"Earlier this year, the Weather Channel's Dr. Heidi Cullen called for the decertification of weathermen who were skeptical of manmade global warming. Grist Magazine's staff writer David Roberts said that his solution for the "bastards" who were members of what he termed the global warming "denial industry" is, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg."

What part of that looks like science to you? When I see fascists I tend to assume they are in it for the power, not the Truth or to save anything except their power.

Re:One Sided science

[scot4875]

Way I see it is if we give in we get world socialism which would result in the Hell on Earth

This is why we can ignore you. I don't expect you to understand why.

--Jeremy

Re:One Sided science

[radtea]

Most of what you described concerns precision, not accuracy, which won't be known for another couple of decades.

Furthermore, 31 tunable unphysical parameters is 26 more than the number canonically required to make an elephant fly, and short-term integrations tell you very nearly nothing about the longer-term behaviour of the model.

As a some-time computational physicist I find accounts like yours disturbing and depressing. The few times I've dug deeply into GCMs what I've found has been no where close to sufficiently physical to support the weight of the conclusions people are putting on them.

My favourite was a quite well-regarded (now obsolete) model in the early 2000's that didn't conserve energy natively. Energy conservation was imposed by fixing up temperatures after each time step. If a student did that and claimed it was anything but an unphysical hack guaranteed to produce meaningless results over tens of thousands of time-steps for reasons that are obvious and well-known to anyone who has ever seriously engaged in computational physics, I would fail them.

I guess here's one question: how many people working on GCMs have worked on the modeling of a diverse set of physical systems? My impression is that the work is mostly being done by climatologists, not computational physicists, and as such the people creating the models have no idea how appallingly naive and optimistic many of their assumptions are. Those of us who've spent a lot of time on simpler systems and seen the astonishing results of apparently benign but mildly unphysical parameterizations are a lot more cautious.

None of this is to say that GCMs haven't improved a lot in the past ten years and the really egregious errors have so far as I can tell mostly been fixed, or that we should cavalierly continue to dump gigatonnes of garbage into the air (I am in favour of market-based solutions to CO2 emissions, such as cap-and-trade.) But the results of GCMs are still not where I personally would like them to be as a driver of policy, and it worries me that they are being used by both business and governments as a guide to forward planning.

Re:One Sided science

[lonecrow]

Perhaps it would be better to say that we want evidence based policies rather then ideologically driven policies?

Re:One Sided science

[docmordin]

As a some-time computational physicist I find accounts like yours disturbing and depressing.

Nowhere in my posts have I explicitly espoused the current crop of global climate models: I stated that I wish to see those ardent skeptics go out and intelligently start to refute those models (be it through comment papers or, my primary hope, by advancing much more sound methodologies).

To elaborate, having done a Ph.D. in applied math and another in statistics, let alone having worked on incredibly complex mathematical models for seemingly simple biological, neurological, and geological processes, I recognize that many of the climate models in the literature are likely woefully inadequate. For example, the HadCM2, which I believe you were discussing in your post, required an adjustment phase, whereby additional, "artificial" heat and freshwater fluxes at the ocean surface were added in order to produce "good" simulations (this was, however, corrected in the HadCM3: C. Gordon, et al., "The simulation of SST sea ice extents and ocean heat transports in a version of the Hadley Centre coupled model without flux adjustments", Clim. Dyn. 16: 147-168, 2000; V. D. Pope, et al., "The impact of new physical parameterizations in the Hadley Centre climate model - HadAM3", Clim. Dyn. 15: 1230146, 2000; M. Collins, et al., "The internal climate variability of HadCM3: A version of the Hadley Centre coupled model without flux adjustments", Clim. Dyn. 17: 61-81, 2001). Nevertheless, many of them do at least couple multiple processes, e.g., thermomechanical ice sheet dynamics and chemical transport models.

That being said, I would relish the thought of more money, be it from public or private sources, being pumped into exascale computing so we could reduce the equivalent of 64 Blue Gene /Q cabinets into a single one and start doing much more complex simulations.

Re:One Sided science

[williamhb]

Well, you're just wrong about that. "Science" is not some oracle out of the Wizard of Oz that pronounces on the truth and falsehood of things

"Well you're just wrong about that. Chewbacca is a wookie." (I didn't say the thing you claim I'm "wrong about" either)

Re:Common sense

[khallow]

Dictates that whatever the oil industry want's to do, its probably wrong.

You don't need common sense, just automatically vilifies anything the oil industry does. It's as easy as breathing.

It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

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.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Sarius64]

No rational person is in denial. In general, they marvel at the fact that our energy policy is still controlled by actors' feelings.

Thorium: It is about three times more abundant than uranium and about as common as lead.

http://www.hobart.k12.in.us/ksms/PeriodicTable/thorium.htm

http://thoriumforum.com/explanation-lftr-liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactor

The number one complaint I see about thorium is that we'll have to teach engineers new techniques and safety systems. Really?

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[The Mighty Buzzard]

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..

Why, exactly? You have a specific reason in mind as to why we should avoid continued gathering of an existing resource when we've got no currently viable alternative?

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

Because on a geological timescale, what we're doing is releasing all the CO2 that has ever been sequestered on earth ALL AT ONCE. If you can't see there could be a problem with that you are in denial.

There are plenty of viable alternatives, they just need to be funded to the same extent as the fossil fuel industries.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

The "fix" in this case produces an industrial civilization rather than a temporary high. That makes comparisons to addiction rather iffy.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

You're assuming that "industrial civilisation" is all good, with no downsides. Human beings didn't evolve to live this way, and as a result many, many people are unable to cope, and are dysfunctional in all sorts of ways. Look at last week's events in Denver - would that have happened in a tribal colony? Doubtful. In many ways the world we have built on the fossil fuel glut proves my thesis.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[cpu6502]

Just think of oil and coal as solar power...... after all that's where all the stored energy originated.

BTW what are YOU doing to reduce oil usage?
- got a 70mpg car like I've got? (granted the 3-cylinder insight was discontinued but you could have bought one while it was on sale)
- got a PassivHaus that requires no heating, thus saving thousands of kilowatt-hours each year?

 

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

Just think of oil and coal as solar power...... after all that's where all the stored energy originated.

For sure, except that the problem is the timescales over which the energy byproducts (the CO2) is released. Millions of years of solar energy sequestered as CO2, released in ~100 years. See the problem?

BTW what are YOU doing to reduce oil usage?

What I can. I have direct solar hot water heating, a wind turbine to offset my grid load and I'm working on a home-build EV, though admittedly the latter is a recreational vehicle rather than something to commute in. But I work from home anyway, so my IC car use is much lower than most people's. My house could be better insulated (trying to improve that whenever any reno work causes the gap between the walls to be exposed) but our main source of heating is a wood-fired stove which is totally sustainable.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[williamhb]

Whether fracking is scientifically sound or not, ...

There is a mistake going on in the debate -- when someone tries to turn it into a scientific argument, which sounds very noble, what they are also doing is suggesting that the scientific conclusion should be the policy conclusion as a matter of course. If it's the best theory at the time, that's what we should go with. Unfortunately that is often a seriously bad idea as science and policy have very different risk profiles. If you try your scientific theory out and it is wrong, you revise the theory and move on. If you try your scientific theory out in a safety-critical environment, it is wrong, and everyone dies, you don't. This is why, for instance, pharmaceuticals have to jump through many hoops to prove their safety long after they have proved their efficacy (ie, long after they have become the best available scientific theory of their effect) and long after they have been shown to be theoretically safe. What we certainly do not want is policy being coerced by arguments that "there is no empirical evidence that it would cause (plausible catastrophic problem X)" which sounds rhetorically like it means "we've experimentally determined it wouldn't" but actually just means "nobody ran a decent enough experiment to find out it would".

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

You're assuming that "industrial civilisation" is all good, with no downsides.

I'm sorry, but I'm not as drooling stupid as you seem to think I am. I'm good with a society that has net benefits, thank you.

Human beings didn't evolve to live this way, and as a result many, many people are unable to cope, and are dysfunctional in all sorts of ways. Look at last week's events in Denver - would that have happened in a tribal colony?

Absolutely. Not as many might have died because the nut case would be armed with say, a club or ax instead of a cheap assault rifle and smoke bombs.

Doubtful. In many ways the world we have built on the fossil fuel glut proves my thesis.

Well, all I can say to that is that it is good you replied to this story. Now we can have a living example of confirmation bias in action.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

Well at least I focus on the arguments, instead of resorting to ad-hominem attacks.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

Well, I did more than just insult you. What does "net benefit" mean? It doesn't mean "you are poo poo head".

Merely observing as you did earlier that something has a cost is useless. Every choice of consequence has a downside if for no reason other than the other choices which weren't made. And since choosing to have an industrial civilization is a rather profound choice in its effects on humanity and the environment, it has substantial downsides as well.

But one can't consider it in a vacuum. One can only eschew something like oil-based industrial civilization by choosing something else, be it some simple like switching fossil fuel-based oil with something that's more renewable, or complex like going to a completely different sort of global civilization structure that happens to be far less dependent on oil. But these have their own downsides.

It strikes me that you haven't considered the benefits and costs of the choices you want to make.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

It strikes me that you haven't considered the benefits and costs of the choices you want to make.

I do not disagree that apparently there are benefits. It's hard to even consider a world where they would have to be given up, but think on this:

Modern man has been on earth 200,000 years or so. Modern civilisation as we know it pretty much just 200 years. That's 0.001% of the total. I think that's simply far too early to say whether in fact there are net benefits. Perhaps there will be net costs, if we cannot fully adapt to the environment we've created. It may be the dysfunction we see today is just a temporary fall-out from this change, but it may not be. We can't tell. The short term benefits are so compelling that we dislike thinking long-term like this. And in that respect it's EXACTLY like a drug "hit". We're still feeling the initial rush, and cannot think straight.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

It's hard to even consider a world where they would have to be given up

I have no trouble coming up with scenarios to the contrary. Maybe you should peruse the dystopian and disasturbation sci fi literature some time?

Modern man has been on earth 200,000 years or so. Modern civilisation as we know it pretty much just 200 years. That's 0.001% of the total. I think that's simply far too early to say whether in fact there are net benefits. Perhaps there will be net costs, if we cannot fully adapt to the environment we've created. It may be the dysfunction we see today is just a temporary fall-out from this change, but it may not be. We can't tell. The short term benefits are so compelling that we dislike thinking long-term like this. And in that respect it's EXACTLY like a drug "hit". We're still feeling the initial rush, and cannot think straight.

Again with the drug hit metaphor and again with no justification for that metaphor.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Whatsmynickname]

> 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. Where precisely is the energy for you to type that comment on your computer, store it, and me reading it is coming from? Unicorns and magic pixie dust?

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

I'm not sure it is a metaphor. I don't have to justify it - I've presented my position and the reasons for it. You can agree or disagree, but it's up to you to show my argument is incorrect with sound reasoned argument of your own. I don't see any so far, just a denial that there is a problem. Which was my original point.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

I don't have to justify it - I've presented my position and the reasons for it.

And you could present a completely different position and it'd be just as valid.

The thing that breaks the drug analogy or whatever is that recreational drugs simply aren't needed. Energy is needed. Even if we were to do away with everything else, we still need to eat in order to live, meaning we still need energy no matter how much we pare away.

So given that our society collectively needs energy just to exist and how it's currently structured, it needs a lot of it per person, what makes that an addiction rather than a normal need?

As I see it, the addiction metaphor assumes that this is a behavior which both we can choose to break and which is good to break, but which we won't break because of addiction-based behavior. But it doesn't have the addiction behavior. There's no positive reinforcement for using oil-based products, electric cars of the same capability would provide the same basic experience as gasoline cars.

What does change is there are technical, cost, and infrastructure advantages to oil-based infrastructure that its rivals don't have. None of these have any analogue to drug use or addiction. One doesn't use heroin because it is cheaper and more convenient than not using heroin. Not using recreational drugs at all is more convenient and cheaper than any of the drug choices. But one can't chose just to not use energy. That leads to starvation and death which generally isn't considered cheaper and more convenient.

I don't see any so far, just a denial that there is a problem. Which was my original point.

Well, I guess you still haven't see anything beyond that. It doesn't mean that you have received a worse answer than what you want or expect however.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

Because on a geological timescale, what we're doing is releasing all the CO2 that has ever been sequestered on earth ALL AT ONCE.

Well, we aren't actually doing that. Most CO2 is bound with limestone not loose as extractable fossil fuels.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[TapeCutter]

"No currently viable alternative" - This is just total bullshit, the only thing stopping renewables from powering our civilization is political will.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[AmiMoJo]

The big problems with Thorium reactors are not technical. To build a commercial scale reactor would cost in the many tens of billions of dollars range and take about 10 years all said and done. That gets you a demo plant and certification. Then you have to convince companies to actually buy the things and run them for 30+ years when there are cheaper and proven alternatives, and at a time when the world in general is going of nuclear.

There is also the issue of waste when the plant is decommissioned. Thorium creates additional problems because the reactor vessel itself becomes highly radioactive, far more so than with traditional designs.

Why, do you think, are Thorium reactors not being built? There is simply no market for them.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Electricity Likes Me]

Because on a geological timescale, what we're doing is releasing all the CO2 that has ever been sequestered on earth ALL AT ONCE.

Well, we aren't actually doing that. Most CO2 is bound with limestone not loose as extractable fossil fuels.

Missing the key word "sequestered". Most CO2 bound with limestone has been that way for millions if not billions of years. Most CO2 which has been sequestered from the atmosphere since then however, is not bound to limestone, it's oil.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Electricity Likes Me]

75% of it is coming from the photons landing my roof.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[CrimsonAvenger]

but our main source of heating is a wood-fired stove which is totally sustainable.

Noting, of course, that this last is true as long as wood-fired stoves are rare. If everyone had one, there'd not be enough forest in the world to provide the wood required.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

Agreed, but that's really an argument about population. My wood fire is sustainable because I can grow enough timber to keep it going indefinitely on the land I own (which isn't huge, but it is more than the average city plot), but not everyone has that much land.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[The Mighty Buzzard]

You think? If we stopped gathering fossil fuels tomorrow, half the nation would be dark as soon as the coal ran out, most of the nation would be unable to get to their jobs as soon as the gas ran out, and most of the food would run out as soon as the diesel ran out. Those are just the primary effects.

Why? Because we do not have an infrastructure that is capable of switching over to another energy source immediately or even within a decade. There may be alternative energy sources but without a slow and steady rise in the price of fossil fuels to make alternatives financially viable, they will never be able to build up the production capacity needed to supply an entire nation.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Hatta]

You have a specific reason in mind as to why we should avoid continued gathering of an existing resource

Because some people want their great-great grand children to inherit a habitable Earth. The Cretaceous period was not "the good old days".

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[CrimsonAvenger]

but that's really an argument about population.

Anyone whose solution to the world's problems starts with "kill 80+% of the population" worries me a great deal.

My land also is more than sufficient to keep my woodstove operational. But I don't consider that a useful alternative to more "conventional" solutions, because my solution works only for a handful.

In other words, I'd rather have solutions for everyone, not just for the favored few (i.e. the rich)....

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

Missing the key word "sequestered".

Are you trying to be serious here? Of course, CO2 bound in limestone is sequestered.

Most CO2 bound with limestone has been that way for millions if not billions of years. Most CO2 which has been sequestered from the atmosphere since then however, is not bound to limestone, it's oil.

Nonsense, diatoms and corals still sequester CO2 today into calcium carbonate.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[GrahamCox]

Anyone whose solution to the world's problems starts with "kill 80+% of the population" worries me a great deal.

Me too, and I most certainly said nothing of the sort. Birth control on the other hand, and good nutrition so that people don't have to breed excessively to ensure the survival of a few... but we're getting a long way from fracking.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[khallow]

Because we will have to do so eventually, fossil fuels being a non-renewable resource.

So then, the issue is one of timing. Why do it today? There is considerable economic value to delaying fixed cost expensive changes.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Because some people want their great-great grand children

You see what happens when you quote half a sentence without important qualifying clauses?

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Hatta]

The last half of the sentence was not an important qualifying clause. Continued extraction of fossil fuels will continue to heat the Earth, whether we have an alternative or not. The consequences of this are likely to be so bad, that we should stop entirely even in the absence of alternatives.

You think it would suck living without fossil fuels? It's going to suck even more for your great-great(-n*great) grand children to live without fossil fuels on an Earth that's hotter than it's been in millions of years. Either we take the pain now, or there's going to be orders of magnitude more pain in the future. That's the choice we have.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[arkane1234]

You say this as if it's a bad thing.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[scot4875]

And increased ocean acidity is doing wonders for corals and diatoms.

--Jeremy

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[scot4875]

Where precisely is the energy for you to type that comment on your computer, store it, and me reading it is coming from? Unicorns and magic pixie dust?

Mostly hydroelectric. Also a bit of wind.

--Jeremy

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[The Mighty Buzzard]

You, sir or madam, are an imbecile. Descendants are not an issue if we do not continue to survive. The dead to not procreate. Without fossil fuels, there is no food transportation and food production is cut back to horse and plow levels of productivity. Yes, everyone currently living in a city will starve to death in a matter of months if they do not immediately leave and even then their odds are extremely bad.

When we have the means to do without fossil fuels, fine. Peachy damned keen. I'll help you kick them in the ass on their way out the door. Spouting the tripe you just did only exposes you as either a moron or a psychopath though.

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Moofie]

OK, let's get back to red in tooth and claw as fast as possible.

You first.

What exactly do you intend to hunt?

Re:It's like a drug to 'em (us)

[Moofie]

"wood-fired stove which is totally sustainable."

What's the CO2 output of that stove look like?

Coincidentally....

[Phrogman]

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.

Re:Coincidentally....

[khallow]

why should we believe everything we are told just because a scientist says its so

We shouldn't. That's the argument from authority fallacy. Valid science does get produced. Look at the evidence not the figure heads.

Re:Coincidentally....

[AmiMoJo]

Problem is anyone can set up an "institute" and proclaim themselves to be a "scientist", then start accepting payment to produce "scientific reports". The more accomplished ones mange to get published in journals, although some of the journals are in fact just propaganda paid for by interested parties.

Best of all the media loves to jump on these reports and boil them down to a headline and maybe a paragraph/10 seconds of filler, followed by masses of opinion and reactionary "analysis".

Re:Coincidentally....

[Phrogman]

I agree. The problem is that most of us are not in any way remotely qualified to judge the quality or reliability of the information we receive. We end up trusting the information based on the source - which is hardly scientific.
I do not know if this is true, but I heard recently that Cambridge University in the UK has changed its policy on papers which are published there. It used to be that if a paper was payed for by a corporation or organization etc, as opposed to being pure research - that Cambridge required that the entity who financed the paper would be identified on the cover. That way the reader could at least take that into consideration. Now apparently they no longer identify the sponsor of a paper. If this is true, it makes me trust Cambridge information a lot less than I would have previously. I would like to know if its true of course, or just rumour.

i see

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Sad saga.

[Antony T Curtis]

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.

Re:Sad saga.

[Animats]

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.

Not really. Most sewerage disposal plants generate methane and use it for power. There's more than enough to run the plant, but it's not a major source of power. Our local landfills in Silicon Valley capture methane to generate power. The big landfill near Google HQ used to do that, but over time, the methane decay slowed down, the generators were removed, and a golf course and rock music venue were put on top of the garbage piles.

Re:Common sense

[jmorris42]

I call bullsh*it. If you really believed that you would boycot the evil energy companies. Which would of course mean you wouldn't be posting on the Internet.

You want energy. I want energy. They want to sell us energy. Where is the evil in any of that?

God Damn, man! They are selling gasoline cheaper than milk right now (US). All you have to do to get milk is feed cows and wait, gas needs a LOT of work to obtain, complex chemistry to refine and a complex worldwide distribution network for both crude and the end products. If you weren't a fool you would give thanks for the hard work being done daily by millions to supply the energy you take for granted. And those 'evil' profits flow into pensions, dividends and lots of other productive uses. And never forget that those evil profits are the thin sliver left over after expenses and a shocking amount of taxes flowing into the welfare state that I'd bet good yellow gold YOU depend on.

Re:Common sense

[WaywardGeek]

Unfortunately, this is true in the most recent victory for fracking: drilling where I live in North Carolina, specifically Durham, and Chatham counties. The oil industry wrote this bill, and the Republicans, with one unwitting Democrat, passed it over our governor's veto.

Now, I'm not against fracking, done responsibly, and if we get something for it. A law I would support would have a public commission with over 50% of it's members voted into the position from counties where fracking occurs. It would have public meetings, and make public exactly what is being pumped into our ground. It would have tough penalties for frackers who pollute our ground water, and the city, county, and state would be free to levy taxes on natural gas profits.

That's not what we got. Thanks to NC redneck Republicans, we're simply a slutty high school girl begging for any boy with a penis to have a good time. They are keeping all records secret for two years in an ongoing way that insures no public information will ever be timely enough to do anything about any crap that happens. The board will meet in secret as often as they like, and are appointed by the Charmain of the House and Governor, who will most likely be Republican when the time comes. The law explicitly forbids the government from informing the public about what chemicals are being pumped into the ground. If you don't want fracking on your land, your neighbor is allowed to force you to, with nothing more that a board rubber stamp. All local laws are automatically revoked if they interfere with fracking. Only a stupid $30K one-time tax can be levied per well by a county, and the law has no state taxes at all for the oil guys.

If that's not enough to give every fracker out there a boner, we also sweetened the deal with a big fat pay-back to T-Bone Pickens, who will get millions for installing natural gas infrastructure in NC. I wouldn't have a problem with this, except T-Bone is a big Republican backer, who just bought himself another fat state contract.

Both Sides

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Both Sides

[jedidiah]

Quite. They call it "water" but what it really is is a chemical cocktail. It's an aqueous solution of some really nasty shit. Because there's also some water in there, they call it water. That's the first obvious nonsense that's going to get people suspicious.

Now contemplate that being injected into the Earth at high pressure.

Not likely to end well. Might be safe under certain conditions. Those conditions will likely not be tolerated by corporations. This is why oil platforms end up exploding. The Ayn Rand cult will push for every corner being cut until you are left with a circle.

Plus, it's hard to take these companies seriously when we're still recovering from their last disaster. Do they think everyone to has collective amnesia.

Re:Both Sides

[garaged]

I dont know much about the current actual mix used for fracking, but they used to use some very harmless polysacharides that couldnt hurt much our healt besides being very good food for bacteria and fungus. I can see the common sense of oil companies migrating from that to anything toxic in a heartbeat just to squeeze one or two more percent points on "productivity" though...

Re:Both Sides

[IdolizingStewie]

In some formations, you do have to avoid things that are good food for bacteria, because the bacteria will then produce H2S as a waste product, which is bad for both the steel casing and creatures that like to breathe oxygen.

For both parent and GP, you can visit fracfocus.org for a record of what was pumped in each well and at what volumes. There aren't a whole lot of trade secrets in the wells I have submitted, though I will admit there are some.

Re:Both Sides

[garaged]

I rather invest in steel than in medics and drugs for cancer and weird kinds of poisoning... Just commenting... Any corporation will prefer the later since it wont be their money being invested on medics and drugs

Re:Both Sides

[IdolizingStewie]

And the fact that breathing H2S can kill you? I did point out that it's not only bad for the casing. The stuff has an OEL of 20 ppm. It starts getting deadly well before reaching 1%.

Re:Rational people?

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Because of the Pizza Rule. Any more than three people can't even agree on pizza toppings. There are a lot more than three scientists.

Confirmation bias

[Citizen of Earth]

is called 'motivated reasoning.'

It's called the Confirmation bias.

If it is as safe as you claim...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:If it is as safe as you claim...

[Black Parrot]

Cue Simpsons episode with Burns served a 3-eyed fish.

LOL, yeah

[Giant Electronic Bra]

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!

Re:LOL, yeah

[sFurbo]

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."

Oh, I see, I'm sorry, what was I thinking, asking people to back up their allegations in stead of accepting them at face value. Especially when other such allegations have turned out to be wrong.

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.

Where? In the only case I can find where this has been established, the conditions were pretty unusual. It was much shallower than normal, and there was no (very little?) cap rock. I agree that we should stop fracking such places, or even that it shouldn't have been allowed, until we have a better idea what went wrong, and if we can do better in the future. However, I do not think that that should put a hold on all fracking.

Re:LOL, yeah

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Fracking right now is very poorly regulated, that's obvious. I don't know that all fracking is going to cause problems, maybe not, but our actual knowledge of what goes on deep below our feet is exceedingly slim. You might want to do some research into the whole subject of disposal wells and related issues too. While disposal and fracking aren't ENTIRELY equivalent things they are related and certainly if you are finding that disposal is a process fraught with contamination issues then you have to ask yourself exactly how unlikely is it that fracked gas well, which by definition increases permeability in the surrounding formations, are also a significant problem.

The real core issue with the 'anti-science claims' story is that it is focusing on one specific aspect of the whole process and one specific issue. There are a LARGE number of issues that surround fracking. To say that it is fine because nobody has proven that this one specific set of issues are a big deal is disingenuous because that leaves a dozen other issues that are far less contentious and where time and time again experience has shown that gas production is a dirty and environmentally damaging process.

My perception of the whole thing is that the gas industry has largely achieved capture of the regulatory process. They get pretty much what they want, their data and assurances are all taken at face value by the regulators, the documentation etc are all quite lax, and when they do run into some issue their pet Congresscritters run right in and give them what they want without proper consideration for externalities and other reasonable considerations. The gas producers are thus very poorly regulated and every unknown is by default assumed to conform to their self-serving assumptions. This may be changing now, to some extent, and it is high time there was balance.

Re:LOL, yeah

[sFurbo]

Yes, there are large problems with fracking. I think the fate of the fracking fluid that returns to the surface is a big one (what do you do with massive amounts of water which contained nastiness from the start and has now been in contact with oil?). I think making sure the wells are constructed correct is a huge problem, especially in the US due to lacking regulation. Regulation is needed, as the industry clearly can't regulate itself.

However, the burning water is (probably) not a problem with fracking. All it does is derailing the discussion we should be having about the real problems, and make it easy for people who want to believe the gas companies to dismiss anything the critics have to say. Especially when the most publicized case have been shown to not have anything to do with fracking, but people keep linking to it anyway.

Re:LOL, yeah

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Yeah, I don't know, as you say the 'burning water' is 'probably' not a fracking problem. I'm not sure 'probably' is the right adjective there, but there is uncertainty. Still, there have been other issues as well, other types of contamination and things like air quality issues too, which have been passed off. It is true that nothing can be absolutely proven to be fracking related except in a couple rare cases, but there certainly are correlations that warrant more looking at.

Otherwise, yeah, making sure the regs are good enough and there's enough regulatory infrastructure to keep up with it is the biggie. This is where Bush was such a horrible administration. They absolutely gutted the regulatory agencies and put cronies from industry in charge of everything wherever they could. This is a largely silent issue that the press doesn't talk about, but the Obama administration has been doing a MASSIVE amount of work trying to undo the damage. Of course they're also vulnerable to regulatory capture, so it is a very uneven and slow process.

Viable alternatives

[Gavrielkay]

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.

Re:Viable alternatives

[garett_spencley]

"I'd love to see the money oil companies spent on defending their dirty businesses go to research and development of cleaner technologies."

I'd love to see their money go to paying my mortgage and buying me a corvette, but it's their money.

You did mention subsidies and I agree with you completely. In the case of subsidies it's not their money. But instead of giving that money to some other business venture I'd rather give it back to the tax payers and let them decide who deserves to get it. Government and business need to be kept separate for the exact same reason that government and church do. When state and church lay in bed they tell us what to do with our minds, when state and business lay in bed they tell us what to do with our bodies. It amazes me that so many who are opposed to religion making its way into politics don't see the problem with government and business mingling; or maybe they do, they just don't see the similarities between regulating thoughts and regulating trade.

I don't really care too much about "viable alternatives." I'm more worried about legal alternatives. As with all scarce resources, prices will rise as supply diminishes. When people are hungry for energy there will be a lot of money to be made in providing it. I'm not so worried about running out of fossil fuel as I am about legal barriers in place preventing new startups with mere millions from competing with the big boys who have the courts and police and politicians in their pockets.

Re:Viable alternatives

[AmiMoJo]

I'd love to see their money go to paying my mortgage and buying me a corvette, but it's their money.

What a bizarre attitude.

I'd love to seem my neighbours clean up all the rat infested rubbish they keep dumping, but it's their yard.

I'd love to see criminals not stabbing people, but it's their knife.

I think we will find that we regulate people's behaviour for everyone's benefit all the time, and that includes big multinational companies. We just need to regulate them a bit better. Well, okay, a lot better.

Business operates with license from us. We make the rules.

Re:Viable alternatives

[DigitalSorceress]

I think the issue at hand is that hidden costs (long-term pollution effects long after the gas companies have made their money and have left) end up being subsidized by all of us... look at the whole superfund thing, and other cases of industrial revolution era manufacturing and mining practices where they were able to come in, extract the resources and walk away from the mess.

IF they'd have had to pay the cleanup costs, they might have been a bit more careful, but instead the public ends up having to pay for it and the original polluters got a free ride on that part.

Now, I understand that part of it was a case environmental awareness simply not being the norm back then. The oceans were thought of as this endless drain you could just dump crap (literally) into and there was enough land that they would just leave it be. Hell, they used to walk away from mines without sealing off the pits - now, there are contractors/companies out there going around sealing off the old mine entrances to keep people and wildlife from falling in the old shafts and killing themselves.

OOps, I digress. The point is that if you can privatize the profits and socialize the risks (which is what I accuse a lot of the energy companies of doing), you essentially get to profit at the expense of the future generation who will have pay the cost (That you avoided) to clean up your mess.

Re:Viable alternatives

[garett_spencley]

What a bizarre attitude.

I'd love to seem my neighbours clean up all the rat infested rubbish they keep dumping, but it's their yard.

I'd love to see criminals not stabbing people, but it's their knife.

Poor analogies. It would be more akin to wanting your neighbour to spend his money to buy you a TV instead of one for himself.

I think we will find that we regulate people's behaviour for everyone's benefit all the time,

Well, I certainly agree that we do "regular people's behaviour" all the time but I do not consider enforcing rights to be "regulating" and what we do makes no statement regarding what we should do. And it occurs to me that we're headed straight towards a semantic argument, and so "regulate" isn't really a good word. When you hear the word obviously that includes preventing people from harming others. When I hear the word I think of dictating to people what to do with their property and/or thoughts. I'm going to stop using that word since it makes communication more difficult.

If you're concerned about "everyone's benefit" then really consider the meaning of "everyone." Society is a group of individuals who choose to coexist, form interpersonal relationships and trade with one another. Given that definition, the "good of society" must include every single individual that comprises that society. Would you then agree that if an act hurts one single individual then it cannot be said to be "good for society" ("everyone's benefit") ?

The only way, therefore, to protect "society" is to protect the individual and that means protecting individual rights and liberty. For the sake of clarity I define "liberty" as "an environment in which all relationships are consensual."

Business operates with license from us. We make the rules.

If "we make the rules" then that puts anyone who gets to claim to represent "we" in a position of great power. If it's up to certain individuals or groups to sacrifice or make concessions for the sake of "society" then everyone is placed immediately into an arena where each group battles it out to get the privileged position of claiming to "be society."

I know there's an awful, face-palm-inducing quote by Mitt Romney saying that "corporations are people too." I am not a Romney supporter, nor a republican, nor do I want to get into a discussion about corporate law and how corporations should be treated (since they are a special case of business and subject to special laws). But when it comes to businesses keep in mind that businesses are created by individuals using their money and their ideas to produce something for the purposes of trade. A business is property. Therefore you're saying that "society" gives a license to everyone else to own property and use it how they see fit. That's a dictatorship, by definition. If the government is "we" and "we" give a license to own and use property how "we" see fit then the government has the authority to take your house, your food, your clothes, your car and anything it wants because you only hold that property with a license from "us."

Since human beings, by our nature, are both a body and a mind; both material and non-material, it means that our nature dictates that we have to satisfy two kinds of "needs." We've acknowledged that people do not think with a license but there's a huge push in the direction of claiming that we breathe (or digest food etc.) with a license, which is essentially the argument that you just made.

"We" can either protect an individual's right to own property or "we" can dictate what a person is to do with their material possessions (and by extension their bodies), which out principle would make it "our" property, making "us" a dictatorship since we would be dictating how people live their lives.

Re:Viable alternatives

[Gavrielkay]

And in socializing those cleanup costs, they manage to appear cheaper than alternatives. Fossil fuels are cheaper, in part at least, because the development was done when it was cheap to do so, when pollution issues were barely an afterthought. Companies trying to put forth alternative energy now have to deal with today's regulations, which cost more in dollars but I'd argue is plenty worth it.

There is a price to be paid in polluting our oceans, ground and air. It might not be added into every gallon of gas, but it's going to come around. My fear is that it'll come due in skyrocketing cancer rates and the like for future generations.

At some point, probably already past, we should quit thinking about cost purely as what will I have to spend to buy something right now. When we figure out in 20 years that none of the ocean's fish are edible, it'll be a bit late to wish we'd spent more on wind/solar/wave etc power.

Re:Viable alternatives

[Moofie]

"but it's their money."

No it's not. The subsidies and tax breaks they get are my money. That's the point.

i'm conflicted on this

[circletimessquare]

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!

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[Teun]

Well written.
I work in the business and all this fracking panic in the US is justified for one simple reason, the US oil companies are not regulated.

So at the same time I say fracking can technically be done in a controlled and responsible way but not with the present US legislation that has grown companies devoid of any moral.

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[circletimessquare]

mod parent up

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[circletimessquare]

explain the BP Gulf disaster

explain this:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2996611&cid=40732551

lack of regulations and effective regulators is the problem

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's even worse than that.

Let's suppose there are *no* accidents, no groundwater contamination, everything works perfectly.

Fracking requires enormous quantities of water, which is then contaminated with, as you point out, a proprietary blend of chemicals (at least one of which is benzene).

And, while methane, when burned, produces half the CO2 that coal does, 'fugitive' methane which inevitably escapes during the drilling process is of concern because methane is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2.

So, at precisely the time when the global temperature curve seems to be at its exponential bend and thus water and greenhouse control will both be increasingly vital, we're about to use enormous quantities of water so that we can release a more potent greenhouse gas.

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[khallow]

explain the BP Gulf disaster

There were so many regulations that regulators had to ignore regulations wholesale in order for the US economy (not just the oil industry) to function. My take is that if regulators were effective, given what regulations already exist, then the US oil industry wouldn't exist.

A telling example of this is the followup inspection of the Deepwater Horizon well following the disaster. Inspectors allegedly found a couple hundred violations that they somehow missed on previous inspections before the accident.

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[dbet]

The ingredients in fracking fluid are known. The formula is not. Just like in a twinkie, the ingredients are listed, but the formula is not. There's no mystery as to what's in fracking fluid, and a quick google search will get you the info you need.

Fracking absolutely needs to follow guidelines for safety. Which they do. So do oil wells, but we still get oil spills. What we should be asking is this: What is the danger of (a) environmental exposure, (b) occupational exposure, and (c) worst case scenario of a "leak" or "failure". Then, we should compare that to other energy methods, such as oil and coal.

So far, oil and coal, which we all already deal, are deadlier and more environmentally dangerous than fracking. But no one seems to care, because they've been around too long to be something you can scare grandma with.

I would also argue that the worst thing you can do to the planet, environmentally, is have children.

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[dbIII]

The industry writes the regulations.

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[khallow]

If that were true, then it wouldn't be so easy to break such regulations. It's far more cost effective as a barrier to entry to require drillers to post large bonds.

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[dbIII]

The industry is large. Some people cut corners and others don't.
I'm trying hard here. How much do I need to dumb it down?

Re:i'm conflicted on this

[khallow]

The industry is large. Some people cut corners and others don't.

That's an interesting assertion. Who can still operate without cutting corners?

Re:Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotcha Republicans are greedy, Democrats are too stupid to dress themselves.

Reasoning, motivated or not

[Okian Warrior]

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.

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[cpu6502]

>>>Economics is all opinions and "schools of thought" with no predictive power.

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.

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[TubeSteak]

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.

The Austrian school pushes laissez faire markets.
You know what caused the housing bubble and ensuing credit crisis?
Deregulation. Which is what the Austrians keep pushing.

The Austrian school of economics gets some things right.
Those things have been absorbed into the other economic schools.
Everything that's left over is considered "bad public policy" no matter how hard the Mises Institute pushes it.

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[the eric conspiracy]

Hmm I thought the Austrian school's primary tenant is that you can't predict economic results.

Also anyone with any market experience could have predicted the dot bomb market crash. It was OBVIOUS that there was a lot of excess in the market and it was going to end badly.

The appropriate guideline here is "trees don't grow to the sky".

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[Stirling Newberry]

They've also predicted hyper inflation in the US for decades. Still hasn't happened.

And they were far from the only school to predict the burst of the dot.com bubble. They were also exactly wrong on the effects of monetary policy under Greenspan. There are plenty of etc. The best use for Austrian economics is to predict how gold bugs will invest, because a large percentage of gold bugs believe in it. Same for "Technical analysis" predicting chartists.

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[diamondmagic]

The Austrian school pushes laissez faire markets.
You know what caused the housing bubble and ensuing credit crisis?
Deregulation. Which is what the Austrians keep pushing.

According to who? The school that couldn't predict anything?

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[englishknnigits]

You know what caused the housing bubble and ensuing credit crisis? Deregulation. Which is what the Austrians keep pushing.

Wrong. What caused the housing bubble was, as usual, perverse incentives. The government, via laws, institutions, and regulations, set up a system where banks could see all of the upsides of risky investments while suffering none of the downsides of those risky investments.
Fannie and Freddie, empowered and backed by the government, bought bad loans from banks allowing banks to continue to make bad loans
FDIC insurance causes depositors to not care about what their bank is doing with their money.
The Federal Reserve provided cheap money and easy credit.
The government encouraged banks to make loans so every American could own their own home
All of this came to a head, people realized houses were over valued, and the market imploded.

During and after the housing bubble burst, what did the government do? They gave all of the creditors their money back, made money and credit even easier to get, and further reinforced the idea that banks can do whatever they want, benefit from all of the upside, and pass all of the downside onto borrowers and tax payers.

The systems we have built are fragile, provide the wrong incentives, and push against human nature. Removing small pieces from a fragile system (deregulation) can be a trigger to a collapse (so in that sense you are correct). Where you go wrong is that you conclude we should not have removed the small piece from the fragile system while Austrians conclude we should reform the fragile system (yes, laissez faire markets).

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[englishknnigits]

You are right about the hyper inflation prediction but wrong on Greenspan. Greenspan kept interest rates low and thus fed the dot.com bubble when he should have increased the discount rate. Go dig a hole, fill it back in, then print yourself some money for doing it. After all, that's what keeps the economy going right!?

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[Stirling Newberry]

Greenspan was keeping money eased in support of a war policy that the public voted for, repeatedly. This would not have become a housing bubble if the appropriate restrictions on mortgage lending had been put into place, as they were in World War II, for example. However the fiscal authority (that's Congress + President in the case of the US) had deemed that the "ownership society" was a goal and went in the opposite direction.

Greenspan was driving the get away car, but it was elected officials which robbed the bank. If you'll look me up, you'll find that I was highly critical of the situation even as it was happening. Austrians were not alone in being critical of the Fed, and sadly for their theory, they've been nailed to the wall for the last 40 years of "HYPERINFLATION FISCAL MELTDOWN." Sure, if you predict disaster every year, eventually you will be right, just as there will be another recession. But was the theory right when others were wrong? No. Did it offer better predictions that others? No. For example, Austrianism predicted that gold would lead other commodities, in fact, it trailed them. Austrianism predicted that the US dollar would collapse first, in fact, it is held up better than other major currencies. Austrianism prescribes austerity in the face of "loss of confidence" ask the Greeks and Irish how well that is working out for them.

All in all, a batting average lower than the geocentric solar system model, not a standard to aspire to.

Re:Reasoning, motivated or not

[englishknnigits]

You are confusing "Austrianism" with "some guy whose blog you found that follows the Austrian school." Austrianism did not predict gold would lead other commodities, it predicted inflation that would affect all commodities. As for currencies, it predicted our currency would fall without knowing most other countries in the world would also start printing money and that banks would stockpile money that was meant for distribution into the economy by Keynesians.

Austerity for Greeks, Irish, and other countries isn't some policy decision, it is an inevitability. To quote someone famous, things that can't go on forever, won't. The reason they are still screwed is because they need Austerity and to give their creditors massive haircuts. There is no way, with or without austerity, they will ever be able to pay off their current debt. Here is an analogy for our positions:
1) You find a man bleeding on the sidewalk and he looks pale
2) You conclude that he needs a blood transfusion because he doesn't have enough blood
3) Austrians (and I) conclude that you need to stop the bleeding and give him a blood transfusion
4) You disagree and say that we should not stop the bleeding because stopping the bleeding will not keep him from dieing
Yes, stopping the bleeding is insufficient. It is still necessary.

Flaming tap water

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:Flaming tap water

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what your point is here.
I remember hearing on tv / radio (NPR) reports of flammable tap water 30 years ago.
Normal? No, I don't think anybody is making this claim.
Naturally-occuring in some places? Yes.

Re:Flaming tap water

[tomhath]

Natural gas in well water is quite common in coal regions (e.g. much of Pennsylvania). It's also common for hydrogen to build up in water heaters. So yea, I wouldn't say "normal", but the flaming tap water is unlikely to have anything to do with gas drilling a few miles away.

Re:Flaming tap water

[evilcoop]

In the farming community I grew up on 40 years ago, it was relatively common for some natural gas to come up with the tap water in some wells. South Western Ontario, Canada. No fracking back in those days.

Re:Flaming tap water

[Grayhand]

Natural gas in well water is quite common in coal regions (e.g. much of Pennsylvania). It's also common for hydrogen to build up in water heaters. So yea, I wouldn't say "normal", but the flaming tap water is unlikely to have anything to do with gas drilling a few miles away.

Actually a number of wells they have admitted the gas in the water was from gas drilling but they claimed it was from pre fracking drilling and not the fracking. Not sure how they are so sure about that one.

Re:Flaming tap water

[jimicus]

That was actually my initial reaction.

But the thing is, that's an emotional reaction. It's not based on any scientific studies - for all we know, the well-publicised flammable tap water we've seen on Youtube lately is caused by something totally different.

Re:Flaming tap water

[dbet]

Flaming tap water is not from fracking, it's from wells being dug into natural gas pockets. The biggest problem with even discussing fracking is the people who will just outright lie to shock people.

Re:Flaming tap water

[dbet]

Someone did make this claim, it was the documentary "Gasland" (2005), but it was later discovered that the house shown in the movie was built on a natural gas deposit, and fracking was not involved.

Re:Flaming tap water

[asylumx]

I remember hearing on tv / radio (NPR) reports of flammable tap water 30 years ago.

That can't be! I heard NPR is one of the most left-wing biased media outlets of all!

Re:Flaming tap water

[sFurbo]

It most certainly is: In the most publicised case, it has been shown that the gas was from natural sources. Somehow Gasland, where the clip is from, forgot to mention that.

Of course, other cases might still result from fracking, but if there are many of them, why choose one that provably isn't as the poster child?

And then you circle back around

[Quila]

Remember the political spectrum isn't a straight line, but a circle; go far enough right you end up left.

Re:And then you circle back around

[bky1701]

And in other news, if you make something hot enough, it freezes!

No. This meme gets repeated, but it is still bullshit. The spectrum is actually two axises. Being far to one side of an axis does not mean you come out magically on the other. It is simply that extreme governments like fascism and communist-socialism tend to be authoritarian as well, and if you are authoritarian enough, left/right differences disappear. Same with extreme libertarianism: if you do not believe in any government, then right/left cases to have any sensible meaning and you end up with anarchy.

The axises are [social support]/[social darwinism-inherited wealth] and authoritarianism/anarchy.

Re:And then you circle back around

[dr2chase]

Except that right now, the extreme right end is elected to Congress, and the extreme left end (in this country) is mostly in history books. Can you name a single Democratic Congressman who with politics similar to Hugo Chavez? Not "as reported by Fox News" or in the fevered imagination of that pill-popping-sex-tourist-draft-dodger with the radio show, but actually making speeches, or proposing legislation? There's nothing close. "Hard left" in this country is to propose a 70% marginal rate on very high incomes (not unheard of in our history, and not bad for the economy) and single-payer health care (like those radical leftists Canadians). "Close the carried-interest loophole", whoa, strong stuff.

Note that, since high marginal tax rates are part of our own history, and single-payer health care is just across our northern border, that promoting these things is in no way "to the exclusion of reality". They've been tried, and they work fine. Whereas, the right wing in this country proposes things that, if/when they are measured, are demonstrated not to work well (everything from abstinence-only sex education, to charter schools, to cutting government spending to "stimulate the economy"). The two "ends" in this country are in no way equivalent.

Re:And then you circle back around

[ghostdoc]

oh here we go again... another slashdot discussion ends up in yank partisan bickering.

Please, for the love of all things shiny, stop. Just stop. Both your political parties are exactly the same, and no-one in the rest of the world gives a toss.

Re:And then you circle back around

[dr2chase]

And you can't tell the difference between addictive poison and a relatively harmless recreational drug? Nor you can tell the difference between jail for any use at all (not as bad as it used to be), and fines for smoking where other people can smell it (getting a little worse in a few places, but not many)?

Re:And then you circle back around

[Toonol]

And you can't tell the difference between addictive poison and a relatively harmless recreational drug?

Excellent example of the confirmation bias mentioned in the article.

Re:And then you circle back around

[SirMarth01]

Or, as The Political Compass divides the axes (the proper plural of "axis"), it's simply labeled Left/Right and Authoritarian/Libertarian.

There are other charts with different names for the axes, but they all amount to the same idea. It doesn't really matter how you label the axes; it's far more important that the distinction is made clear: there's a difference between a person's political standing on personal freedoms and economic structure.

Re:And then you circle back around

[mcgrew]

There's no confirmation bias in his comment, it is accurate. Tobacco is in fact an addictive poison that kills almost all its users with no beneficial effects at all, while marijuana is benign if eaten (if smoked can contribute to emphesyma), can be helpful for some medical problems, is not addictive, is not carcinogenic, and in fact has no bad side effects at all (although the main effect is unpleasant for some people).

No, he's accurate. The confirmation bias is your own, not his.

Re:And then you circle back around

[danbert8]

Actually it's the libertarians who are in the history books. You know the founding fathers? The ones who broke away from Britain because of high taxes? The ones who wanted an extremely limited government that would let you go about your lives in peace?

Re:And then you circle back around

[arkane1234]

Since we're going to get all righteous over the proper way to pluralize 'axis', you can add in how to pronounce it. It's Pronounced 'ack-sees'.

Re:And then you circle back around

[BStroms]

Well in my mind there's no question that tobacco is far worse than marjiuana, claiming there's no bad side effects at all is always a risky claim to make. There have been studies that indicate that's not the case as it leads to increased risk of schizophrenia, especially when used by adolescents.

I'm not even claiming that's a strong enough reason to keep it banned, just that there are bad side effects.

Re:And then you circle back around

[peawormsworth]

Tobacco is in fact an addictive poison that kills almost all its users with no beneficial effects at all, while marijuana is benign if eaten (if smoked can contribute to emphesyma), can be helpful for some medical problems, is not addictive, is not carcinogenic, and in fact has no bad side effects at all (although the main effect is unpleasant for some people).

Marijuana is addictive like sugar and caffeine. I know people who wanted to stop smoking marijuana and it took some time and effort. Marijuana is not as addictive as tobacco or other hard to kick drugs. My personal experience has revealed this to be true. Marijuana is easily given up just as sugar. Its a pain for a few days and boring for a few weeks. Thats all. I just want to point out that you are either not a regular user of marijuana or have never tried to stop taking it for a full month if u believe it is not adictive at all. I know it makes sleeping difficult for regular users who quit.

Tobacco does not kill almost all of its users. Smoking cigarettes is a bad idea because it does increase ur risk of various health problems. It is not a 100% killer. Many smokers die of other reasons and quiters live to die of other things.

You can list the pros and cons of marijuana all you want, but in reality you are probably better off without it. I mean I could list out the benefits of nicotine, but Im not going to tell anyone to smoke for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Therapeutic_uses

Re:And then you circle back around

[Meski]

Except you're only electing slightly left and right, and not extreme.

Re:And then you circle back around

[mcgrew]

Marijuana is addictive like sugar and caffeine

Sugar is not addictive, caffiene is. Sugar can be habituating, as can anything. There are no physical withdrawal symptoms with sugar or marijuana, there are with caffiene and tobacco.

One can be habituated to anything. If someone slaps you upside the head every morning for five years, if it stops suddenly you will miss being slapped upside the head!

I just want to point out that you are either not a regular user of marijuana or have never tried to stop taking it for a full month

Incorrect. I've been smoking it for 40 years, when I could afford to. I've never had any problem at all when I couldn't afford it. Yes, I wished I had some, but I paid my bills rather than putting the bills off to buy pot. But coffee? I'm useless without my coffee! I will delay paying a bill if it's a choice between putting the bill off or doing without coffee.

Giving up cigarettes was the hardest thing I've ever done. And you're right, I didn't do it because of my health, I did it because they cost too damned much and I was trying to raise a family.

Thaks for the link, that was informative and interesting.

Re:And then you circle back around

[mcgrew]

Yes, there is a link, but causation has not been shown. The liklihood is that schitzophrenia makes one more prone to smoke marijuana. From your own link:

The self-medicating theory was also raised â" that the men were taking the drug to alleviate their symptoms. This theory became more popular as further research found that schizophrenic patients often report that cannabis makes them feel better. One of the chemical ingredients of cannabis, cannabidiol, has even been investigated as a treatment for schizophrenia.

However, kids shouldn't be using any psychoactive drug, which is another reason it should be legalized and regulated like alcohol. You can buy marijuana in any high school but you're not likely to find a bottle of bourbon in a high school. It's easier for a teen to buy pot than an adult, since the adult could be an undercover cop. The dealer is safer selling to a kid!

Re:And then you circle back around

[BStroms]

Yes, there is a link, but causation has not been shown. The liklihood is that schitzophrenia makes one more prone to smoke marijuana.

Did you read the entire article? Because if you continue on, you'll find this:

Nevertheless, research on cannabis as a risk factor continued. Psychiatrists from the University of Amsterdam published data suggesting that schizophrenia patients who used cannabis showed worse outcomes than those who didn’t, and further studies confirmed this observation. Recent work following large groups over time also added to the risk theory – and these were careful to include all relevant factors.

Mary Cannon, of Ireland’s Royal College of Surgeons, took part in a New Zealand-based study which found that smoking cannabis before the age of 15 increased the risk of schizophrenia from 3% to 10% by age 26.

Re:And then you circle back around

[mcgrew]

Again, no conclusive answers; "research on cannabis as a risk factor continued", "published data suggesting", "added to the risk theory".

As to kids younger than 15, that's possible, I know few who started much younger than 18. But as I said, that's a reason for legalization. I maintain that kids shouldn't be taking ANY psychoactive substance; the brain is not yet fully developed.

Re:Common sense

[PopeRatzo]

You want energy. I want energy. They want to sell us energy. Where is the evil in any of that?

No "evil". Evil is a religious term. It's just bad policy.

From the article:

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.

Where was the "public scrutiny" coming from? And regarding the "regulation", isn't a big part of the GOP platform to disband (yes, entirely) the EPA and the Dept of Energy? So where is that "regulation" going to come from then? Is the industry going to regulate itself?

They are selling gasoline cheaper than milk right now (US).

So what's the problem? And natural gas is cheaper still, so cheap in fact, one wonders what's behind the push for increased fracking. Doesn't the "law of supply and demand" indicate that when prices are low, production slows?

There's a serious problem now that energy has completely been disassociated with the "law of supply and demand".

And never forget that those evil profits are the thin sliver left over after expenses and a shocking amount of taxes flowing into the welfare state

Do you know how much the "shocking amount of taxes" Exxon paid to the "welfare state" in the last three years was? Go ahead, guess. And do you have any idea what percentage of "welfare" ends up going to pay for energy, putting it right back in the pockets of the energy industry? And let's not forget how "shocking" the percentage of Exxon's oil and Koch Brothers' fracking comes from underneath public land. Now certainly they get oil and gas from under private land, too, but the "shocking amount" of gas and oil under the private land belongs to us and the lease royalties they pay are calculated in the most unbelievably bad deal for the owners (us). We got a look at how much of that oil is under public lands when BP killed a bunch of expendable employees and let a whole bunch of it just spill right off your coast. Oh yeah, they still haven't paid but a fraction of the damages they were supposed to pay to all your fellow gulf state folks that had their livelihoods ruined.

And never forget, friend, that your home state gets a lot more money BACK from the federal government than you pay in taxes, so I'd have a much better chance betting "good yellow gold" that you're getting a bigger taste of that "welfare money" than those of us here in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles.

And you're welcome.

AGW scientists have PR firms too

[Quila]

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.

Re:AGW scientists have PR firms too

[drooling-dog]

Surely you can't be serious. If I wanted to assure my political future I'd pull a Dick Cheney and tell Americans that they should forget about climate change, CO2 and "peak oil" and burn all of the gasoline they can afford. That's what they want to hear. And if I wanted to keep my campaign coffers full and bring in all of that corporate PAC money, I'd be pandering my butt off not to climatologists but to the oil industry, because that is where the real money is.

But sure, Hitler campaigned on a platform of environmental protection and universal health care, if you say so...

Re:Common sense

[Attila Dimedici]

The regulation of most fracking is not coming from the EPA. It is coming from the same place it would come from if the EPA was disbanded, state level departments of environmental resources (or equivalent).
The rational for the creation of the Department of Energy was to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy supplies. The thing is, since the establishment of the Department of Energy, the U.S. has become significantly more dependent on foreign energy supplies. That means that the Department of Energy has been a complete failure at the mission for which it was created (or at least the mission which was claimed to be the reason it was created).

Another possibility

[outsider007]

People don't believe the facts because sometimes scientists will make shit up.

Re:Common sense

[Onuma]

Unfortunately, the trend of USG full and sub-departments completely shooting themselves in the foot is not uncommon.

Department of Energy makes us more foreign-energy dependent.
TSA makes airports less secure than ever, while also more inconvenient and congested than ever.
DEA is attempting to enforce the unenforceable. People want to get high - they're gonna get high! BATFE/DOJ is running guns to Mexican cartels and getting Mexicans and Americans killed in the process.

Basically, if you need a task done as inefficiently and back-assward as possible: hire the gov't!

Fracking

[no-body]

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

Re:Fracking

[no-body]

Oh fart.

Methane is present in the atmosphere at pretty significant levels. That means it's present in all water.

Endocrine disruption usually occurs at extremely small doses.

Seems to me like more pseudo science going on here.

Yeh, smartfart, summer not hot enough just yet, a little more methane helpful?

http://www.nature.com/news/air-sampling-reveals-high-emissions-from-gas-field-1.9982
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338505/title/Natural_gas_wells_leakier_than_believed
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/151545578/frackings-methane-trail-a-detective-story
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421588/high-methane-emissions-measured-over-gas-field-offset-climate-benefits-of-natural-gasquot/?mobile=nc
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/29/454445/natural-gas-industry-methane-leaks-save-2-billion/
all pseudo...
but once the permafrost opens up more, this won't matter - pseudo too, it's all illusion anyway, stay fresh

Re:Fracking

[sFurbo]

leaking methane and other potential endocrine disruptors

Methane is a potential endocrine disruptor? Do you have any citations for that?

Re:Fracking

[no-body]

Methane is a potential endocrine disruptor? Do you have any citations for that?

Can you read English?

"other potential..."

Once you grok that, try Google.com to find out what else comes out of a "natural gas" drill hole.

Once that's accomplished, multiply the extraction quantity with the leakage factor and post it here so you actually contribute something.

Re:Fracking

[the eric conspiracy]

Uh... the grandparent post was about methane exposure and estrogen mimics from fracking operations.

Sorry, but that's baloney. A human being's primary exposure to methane is from his own farts, that is enteric methane.

http://image.sciencenet.cn/olddata/kexue.com.cn/upload/blog/file/2010/1/2010123203248875447.pdf

While about 60% of the methane in the atmosphere is due to human activities, that covers a lot of ground. Waste water treatment plants, all sorts of fossils fuel activities, livestock husbandry, landfills, forest fires, rice paddies and so on.

Fracking is only a small part of this picture.

Re:Fracking

[sFurbo]

So if I say "red and other colors", it is clear that red is not a color? Anyway, I am glad we cleared up what you meant.

Once that's accomplished, multiply the extraction quantity with the leakage factor and post it here so you actually contribute something.

So I am supposed to be doing you work now? Good luck with convincing people that way.

Of course, I would also need to divide by the area over which the spill occurs, integrate over the time and take biodegradation, photodegradation, evaporation and other partitioning into account. Feel free to answer when you have done that, and compared the damage to the economic value of the production.

Why peer review is increasingly broken

[Paul Fernhout]

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:

Re:Religion

[Teresita]

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

Only one true God

[Okian Warrior]

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.

Re:Only one true God

[belthize]

That not how prediction works in economics, sure in physics and chemistry and those other blue collar sciences that's how it works. In economics it's much more accurate, or at least comforting, to look at events and then see that, with proper interpretation, your model was correct.

Re:Only one true God

[MarkRose]

1) Austrian economics does not predict when an event will occur, just that it will. It is so good at predicting future events many Austrians fail to realize non-Austrians don't share the same foresight. This lack of foresight of the non-Austrians leads to them behaving in irrational ways (according to Austrian theory), which in turn delays the arrival of the predicted events. The biggest weakness in Austrian economic theory is that Austrian economics is built on the premise that man is rational, which is not always the case.

2) Many economists have established their careers on other schools of thought and would have to admit they were wrong. Also, economists who advocate a role for government are popular with government and keep their government sponsored jobs.

Re:Only one true God

[dbIII]

Anyone could have predicted the housing bubble. US history is full of them going back a couple of hundred years (New Orleans).

Re:Common sense

[Black Parrot]

Gotcha Republicans are greedy, Democrats are too stupid to dress themselves.

That actually describes US politics pretty well.

Re:Common sense

[circletimessquare]

no, they're not welcome

we need to hold the propagandized fool's feet to the fire of the stupid things they believe

by which i mean: they should get an earful of what their toxic stupid social and economic policy beliefs actually result in, before we as well have to suffer for their idiocy

Re:Common sense

[Cwix]

I see you have been paying attention in straw man creation.

Take something out of context? Check
Place it in context that puts words in someones mouth? Check
Have nothing at all to do with the subject at hand? Check

In case this was a reading comprehension fail, then you will notice that the parent was saying the state of North Carolina has become like a slutty girl. This displays an analogy and a personification, so elementary readers may not fully comprehend the post. In no way does the parent compare anyone in particular with a slutty girl.

Re:Common sense

[PopeRatzo]

The rational for the creation of the Department of Energy was to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy supplies

No, the rational for the Department of Energy was to add to the defense budget without it looking so bad. The Dept of Energy manages the nuclear stockpile.

The regulation of most fracking is not coming from the EPA

No, that's not true. All gas exploration is subject to EPA regs.

Re:Grant Money

[Black Parrot]

When grant money is on the line science will reflect whatever is required to ensure continued financial support.

Right. Scientists are just trying to protect their paychecks, but the energy companies and their political shills are in it for the good of mankind.

It's called "Confirmation Bias"

[Beeftopia]

"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.

Re:It's called "Confirmation Bias"

[Stirling Newberry]

That's a straight up lie. Presently there is a patchwork of rules on disclosure (e.g. http://www.propublica.org/special/fracking-chemical-disclosure-rules ) and no blanket disclosure of compounds and concentrations. Nor any easy way to find out what has been used in an area. A quick search on google turns up a page on proposals for disclosure, dating from this year, but no actual disclosure by anyone.

The talking point is true, your statement is point blank false.

Re:It's called "Confirmation Bias"

[the eric conspiracy]

ORLY?

What is this site then?

http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used

Oh noes!

[Black Parrot]

Sounds like Teh Man got to Dr. Vengosh.

Ok, I'll bite.

[rsilvergun]

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...

Re:Answering your own question

[tomhath]

Where was the fault with the anti-fracking science that led to these regulations?

RTFA. Despite extensive testing there was never any detectable radioactivity in public water sources. The regulations were put in place because of emotion, not science.

Re:Common sense

[khallow]

the people in power without any conscience or sense of decency or responsibility to the common man, who hold making cash more important than people's lives (the integrity of their water supply for dozens of generations)

and the complete and utter propagandized idiots who keep voting them into power

Out of curiousity, do you vote in elections? For who?

Re:Common sense

[Gerzel]

Not really.

However, history shows that while many industrial processes could be made to be both profitable and have a moderated impact on the surrounding environment monied interests dictate that such steps to moderate the impact will not be taken unless forced. Even a small increase in profit is enough to damn basic steps towards safety and basic wellfare of those working and living in and around industry. Thus it is the job of government to ensure that such practices do not produce profit.

Re:Common sense

[thegarbz]

There's a serious problem now that energy has completely been disassociated with the "law of supply and demand".

It's not disassociated at all. The law assumes that there's a finite cost to the supply side of the equation. This is not the case in many processes. The law also assumes a finite quantity capable of being supplied. In this case you will try and maximise your profit by adjusting cost to meet the demand.

The energy industry has a variable cost to supply. It may cost significantly more due to insane overheads and capital costs to run at a slower production rate. Also given how new frackable sources of energy are continuously being found there's no upper limit in our short term (CEO tenure length) view of running companies.

To put it in numbers:
Would you rather product 1 unit at a cost of $1ea and sell for $5
or would you rather produce 2 units at a cost of $0.5ea and sell them both for $2.

The common answer would be do option one and make $3 profit.
The industry answer is do option one AND two and make $4 profit.

Re:Common sense

[WaywardGeek]

It's even worse than I described. You mentioned the people's water supply. In the first version of the bill, the board was explicitly empowered to prohibit the creation of new water reservoirs. It also said some board members must be from Sanford, the town in the middle of the fracking sweat zone. Why would the board need to prohibit new reservoirs? I read somewhere that the water seeping into the ground from reservoirs somehow hurts fracking profits. The final version still grants the board the power to prohibit new water reservoirs, but it's cleverly implicit in the broad powers granted to the board. The conspiracy nut in me wonders if there is a land baron in Sanford who is against a new reservoir because it will harm his fracking profits.

Re:Common sense

[Runaway1956]

The "unwitting Democrat" was bought and paid for. Are you really that naive? Do you believe that your Dummycrats are any more honest than the other party? FFS, look at NAFTA. It has destroyed the economies of TWO nations, and it was pushed through by a Democratic administration.

Wake up and smell the horse shit, dude!!

Re:Common sense

[drsmithy]

You want energy. I want energy. They want to sell us energy. Where is the evil in any of that?

This is called begging the question.

God Damn, man! They are selling gasoline cheaper than milk right now (US). All you have to do to get milk is feed cows and wait, gas needs a LOT of work to obtain, complex chemistry to refine and a complex worldwide distribution network for both crude and the end products. If you weren't a fool you would give thanks for the hard work being done daily by millions to supply the energy you take for granted. And those 'evil' profits flow into pensions, dividends and lots of other productive uses. And never forget that those evil profits are the thin sliver left over after expenses and a shocking amount of taxes flowing into the welfare state that I'd bet good yellow gold YOU depend on.

Not sure if serious.

Re:Common sense

[BlueStrat]

I'm sure the family's of the victims of the most recent Colarado shooting, who are currently having to solicit donations to pay for the healthcare of wounded family members are just so glad America has left it all to the private sector.

If they can get the word out about their needs, they stand a very good chance of receiving enough in donations to not only pay their medical expenses, but also pay off their mortgage and retire comfortably.

You can say a lot of things about American citizens, but one thing nobody can deny is their generosity, regardless of political party, especially towards those in dire/tragic straights. This was such a horrific national tragedy that I'm sure victims & families would be flooded with donations and offers of help if they asked publicly, explaining their needs/circumstances.

Look at all the news reports there were of individual private volunteers that just stood up without any orders or programs or government funding and took it upon themselves and used their own money and resources in New Orleans after Katrina, and the flood of donations that came in from individuals.

You really should have picked something better to make your point with. I can't imagine in circumstances like those in CO that those victims won't receive anything they need from ~300 million Americans that will make certain they receive any care or help whatsoever they may need and then some. I'm very proud to say that in my 5+ decades on this rock, that's one positive thing about the American people that has not changed for the worse, and if anything, has gotten even better.

Strat

Re:Common sense

[mosb1000]

In all fairness to the DOE, they did develop a breeder reactor system that could meet all of our energy needs for hundreds of years to come, and was passively cooled so that it could avoid the fukishima like meltdown problems the current generation of reactors suffer from. It was just politics that stopped it from being built on a larger scale.

Re:Common sense

[stanlyb]

If i have to tell it in business terms, if you want to get 1 dollar, you have to ask for 10 dollars. The same is with the fracking. If you want to stop it in 50% of the cases, then you have to try to stop it in 100% of the cases. As simple as that.

Re:Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the workers who cleaned up the toxic debris after the WTC? They government wouldn't help them cover cancer costs and by the time they started getting incurable cancers the public had already moved on. They didn't get help. They got shafted. Americans are generous for ten minutes while the story is in the media but I bet if some of the survivors end up needing 24/7 care for the rest of their lives people won't be donating because there'll be a new shooting. We seem to have one once every five years. Oh wait, there was that shooting at the Korean Christian university a couple months ago but no one cared because they weren't white. Ok, so white related killing sprees happen about once every five years. So if you're lucky you have five years to recover or you're out of luck if you have to rely on "fellow Americans" to help you.

Duke - University built from Tobacco fortunes

[leftie]

Duke - Historical center of the attack against medical evidence proving smoking and second-hand smoke was hazardous to one's health

I'll call bull on this one

[Grayhand]

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.

Re:I'll call bull on this one

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't, but you might be considered rational if you assumed that the 6,000 feet of rock between the gas and your water would be an effective barrier against contamination.

Re:I'll call bull on this one

[metallurge]

And why exactly would you assume that, in the absence of human intervention, gas just stays put underground? Plenty of oil and gas reservoirs exist in rock strata that were not their source. Indeed, as you say, the fact that it migrates upward isn't shocking. It's physics. Been happening a lot longer than humans have had anything to do with it.

One should also keep in mind that there is an ecomomic incentive for oil and gas companies to contain it rather than letting it escape/dilute beyond their ability to produce.

Methane contamination of drinking water accompanyi

[Stirling Newberry]

"Methane concentrations were detected generally in 51 of 60 drinking-water wells (85%) across the region, regardless of gas industry operations, but concentrations were substantially higher closer to natural-gas wells (Fig. 3). Methane concentrations were 17-times higher on average (19.2 mg CH4 L1) in shallow wells from active drilling and extraction areas than in wells from nonactive areas (1.1 mg L1 on average; P

Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing

Stephen G. Osborn, Avner Vengosh, Nathaniel R. Warner, and Robert B. Jackson

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/20/8172.short

Let's go confusing the issue with facts: this study gave compelling evidence that NG wells contaminated drinking water, and were consistent with an increase in deep wells.

No need, it's already been done

[A nonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No need, it's already been done

[bidule]

I wonder what would happen if we applied good old 19 out of 20 statistical certainty.

Take all recent peer-reviewed predictions, the last 5 or 10 years, and remove the Fundy Bay grade 2% and the la-la-la 2%. Would we converge to a coherent range of effect, or do we need another 5 years to reach 19/20 consensus?

Re:No need, it's already been done

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the 1970 (?) climate models which predicted global cooling.

What was the nature and sophistication of climate models back in 1970? [Citations gratefully received].

It is true that of the papers published in the 1970s where a prediction was made as to future change, a minority predicted cooling (Petersen et al. 2008). Oddly enough the majority who were predicting warming, even back then, were proved to be right. This is weird, because the story of the lone scientist, standing up to the corrupt orthodoxy in the field, who is proved right over time, makes for a far more compelling narrative.

Re:Common sense

[jmorris42]

Bluestrat already tore you a new one about the need for dependence on government healthcare, let me attack more directly.

We have already heard the inspiring story that of the twelve dead, three were MEN who did the only honorable thing their government left for them to do, die in the service of their womenfolk; taking the bullets in their body that others might live. But imagine, if you can, what might have been had one or two of the people in those seats been legally allowed to bear arms. Yes a sudden attack by a determined evil man would have resulted in deaths, no doubt of that. But would the madness have continued until his damned gun jammed? Riddle me that.

Ok, somebody might have got trigger happy. Somebody might have been an incompetent who shouldn't have been carrying and shot somebody by accident in the confusion. As compared to to the body count we are watching on the news that sounds like a price every survivor would have been willing to pay.

Show me a mass killing and I will show you the sign on the wall declaring the 'gun free zone.' CO has a concealed carry law but Aurora forbids guns to anyone but a LEO. The State had finally passed an override over that local law so perhaps someone caught carrying could have contested it and got off with just a no-contest conviction for the remaining law against any discharge. But it was all moot because the multiplex was private property and the politically correct corporation had declared it a 'gun free zone.' Notice who that sign failed to convince, but all the law abiding DID obey and the rest is history.

Think about it, these guys are evil, some are even deranged, but the ones who get a body count worthy of national media aren't totally stupid. They know where they can find unarmed targets.

Way to willfully misunderstand

[A nonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the workers who cleaned up the toxic debris after the WTC? They government wouldn't help them cover cancer costs and by the time they started getting incurable cancers the public had already moved on.

Well, they shouldn't have waited to ask for help from the public until after the government shafted them.

That's a problem with them choosing to depend first on government instead of on fellow-citizens, when government usually screws things up and screws people over.

Re:Common sense

[PopeRatzo]

It's not disassociated at all.

Of course it is. Price is much more sensitive to futures and derivatives than to the cost of a barrel of oil. It's further manipulated by shutting down refining capacity.

That's why we have higher prices now than when the barrel price of oil was 40% higher than currently.

Would you rather product 1 unit at a cost of $1ea and sell for $5
or would you rather produce 2 units at a cost of $0.5ea and sell them both for $2.

Oh, I see what you're saying. The "law of supply and demand" still applies, but the energy companies manipulate one side of the equation. And since the retailers are mostly owned by the producers, and energy companies, using their own private foreign policies and mercenary armies can create artificial supply shortages and demand increases.

It's complicated.

[Lord Kano]

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

Re:Common sense

[riverat1]

They think the Department of Energy has prevented more oil from being drilled in the US, ignoring the fact that there isn't enough oil in the US to supply our needs for more than a decade anyway. Of course when it comes to coal and natural gas the US is completely self sufficient.

Re:Common sense

[KermodeBear]

I don't know of any republicans that want to completely abolish the EPA. Maybe reign it in a bit - its powers are pretty broad - but abolish it completely? Heck no. Even if one doesn't believe in man-made global warming, one does believe that dumping nuclear waste into rivers and lakes should be very much illegal. There may be a few fringe people who want to destroy it completely, but part of the general GOP platform? No, I don't think so.

I'm happy that there is a governmental body that can pass some regulation and assess fines; as someone who lives near Cleveland, OH I much prefer that we no longer set rivers on fire.

The "Left" and the "Right" have a lot more in common than either side thinks, but they're too busy spitting ridiculous one-liner sound bites and demonizing the other side to see the common ground and act on it. There's too much money and power to be made in being a cocky bastard and convincing people that "the other side" is just a bunch of horrible, evil, terrible people that want to kill babies.

I wish I could just throw up my hands and ignore politics. I really do. I'm sick of the gotcha game, sick of the nasty lies, the deliberate information and hyperbole. It just pisses me off. But I still pay attention and vote anyway because, well, maybe I can get someone a little less awful into office next time. A little less small minded, a little less polarized.

I'm probably fooling myself, though.

If that's pulling a "Dick Cheney" ....

[King_TJ]

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.

Re:If that's pulling a "Dick Cheney" ....

[WalksOnDirt]

Whether we can afford to burn oil until it runs out isn't known, especially since what counts as oil changes. There is for sure enough coal that we can dig up to cause big problems.

What we can do about it is to replace coal with nuclear, electrify most transportation, change refining processes (no more coke for iron) and use different material for cement. What's left we can offset by grinding up the right rocks to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Well, that's my recommendation anyhow. I don't expect to live the fifty years or so before we face serious consequences.

Re:If that's pulling a "Dick Cheney" ....

[docmordin]

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, it sounds like humanity can largely adapt.

There are plenty of things that can happen due to adverse climate change. For example, agricultural outputs are expected to be lower (anywhere from 8-30% in some areas), which can lead to food crises in developing countries or much higher food prices in developed ones:

D. S. Battisti and R. L. Naylor, "Historical warnings of future food insecurity with unprecedented seasonal heat", Science 323: 240-244, 2009
M. E. Brown and C. C. Funk, "Food security under climate change", Science 319: 580-581, 2008
D. B. Lobell, et al., "Prioritizing climate change adaptation needs for food security in 2030", Science 319: 607-610, 2008
W. Schlenker and D. B. Lobell, "Robust negative impacts of climate change on African agriculture", Environ. Res. Lett. 5: 014010, 2010
M. B. Burke, et al., "Shifts in African crop climates by 2050, and the implications for crop improvement and genetic resources conservation", Glob. Environ. Change 19: 317-325, 2009
T. W. Hertel, et al., "The poverty implications of climate-induced crop yield changes by 2030", Glob. Environ. Change 20: 577-585, 2010
X. Wei, et al., "Future cereal production in China: The interaction of climate change, water availability and socio-economic scenarios", Glob. Environ. Change 19: 34-44, 2009
F. Tao, et al., "Climate–crop yield relationships at provincial scales in China and the impacts of recent climate trends", Clim. Res. 38: 83-94, 2008
D. B. Lobell, et al., "Nonlinear heat effects on African maize as evidenced by historical yield trials", Nature Clim. Change 1: 42-45, 2011
D. B. Lobell and G. P. Asner, "Climate and management contributions to recent trends in U.S. agricultural yields" Science 299: 1032, 2003
D. B. Lobell and C. B. Field, "Global scale climate-crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming" Environ. Res. Lett. 2: 014002, 2007
S. P. Long, et al., "Food for thought: Lower-than-expected crop yield stimulation with rising CO2 concentrations", Science 312: 1918-1921, 2006
J. Memmott, et al., "Global warming and the disruption of plant-pollinator interactions", Ecol. Lett. 10: 710-717
V. Mishra and K. A. Cherkauer, "Retrospective droughts in the crop growing season: Implications to corn and soybean yield in the midwestern United States", Agric. Meteorol. 150: 1030-1045, 2010
S. Peng, et al., "Rice yields decline with higher night temperature from global warming", PNAS 101: 9971-9975, 2004
W. Schlenker and M. J. Roberts, "Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to U.S. crop yields under climate change", PNAS 106: 15594-15598
S. M. Schrader, et al., "Thylakoid membrane responses to moderately high leaf temperature in Pima cotton", Plant Cell Environ. 27: 725-735
R. Wassmann, et al., "Regional vulnerability of climate change impacts on Asian rice production and scope for adaptation", Adv. Agron. 102: 93-103, 2009
Ph. Ciais, et al., "Europe-wide reduction in primary productivity caused by the heat and drought in 2003", Nature 437: 529-533, 2005
E. A. Ainsworth, "Rice production in a changing climate: A meta-analysis of responses to elevated carbon dioxide and elevated ozone concentration", Change Biol. 14: 1642-1650, 2008
E. A. Ainsworth, et al., "FACE-ing the facts: Inconsistencies and interdependence among field, chamber and modeling studies of elevated CO2 impacts on crop yield and food supply", New Phytol. 179: 5-9, 2008
S. Ceccarelli, et al., "Plant breeding and climate changes", J. Agri. Sci. 148: 627-637, 2010
R. M. Doherty, et al., "Implications of future climate and atmospheric CO2 content for regional biogeochemistry, biogeography and ecosystem services across East Africa", Glob. Change Biol. 16: 617-640, 2010
H. F. Zheng, et al., "T

Re:If that's pulling a "Dick Cheney" ....

[tbannist]

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.

Actually, it will happen both gradually and overnight. Katrina and New Orleans is the template for things to come. If the government doesn't keep up with the gradual changes, then a big event will come along and "wipe out" the city.

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.

That is deliberate. The people opposed to doing anything about it, want to delay the question of whether it's a good idea to do anything until after it's too late to do anything, then they won't have to pay. It's pretty much the whole reason libertarian groups are funding anti-climate change campaigns.

Re:Common sense

[Unknown Lamer]

Probably not, actually. 'Tho my personal view is that both "parties" may as well be one and are roughly equally evil ("how would you like to be screwed over today, sir?") ... I listened to the vote as it happened, and it was pretty clearly a "oh no... I hit the wrong button" moment. Then the majority used some parlimentary trickery to prevent a reconsideration vote (which I believe they could have done, since a supposedly anti-fracking person voted for it and everyone can vote to reconsider...), and then, despite a clearly ambiguous voice vote, they closed the session and re-opened a new one at 12:05 a.m. instead of waiting until morning... just to affirm the previous day's actions into law and half-heartedly debate one bill before giving up 20 minutes later.

Also, there was another Democrat who definitely traded her vote... something about tax breaks for the film industry in eastern Carolina made her change her tune from anti-fracking to pro-fracking that night. A terrible combination of unfortunate circumstances I say.

The worst part is that NC has so little natural gas that it seems really pointless. That, and they're going to be doing it under a freaking Nuclear power plant (slated to be expanded to 3 units soon, but with Duke at the helm now ... save us all). I look forward to the day when a mild seismic event occurs and triggers a week long "oops we just lost 3GW of baseload to an automatic SCRAM" event.

Re:Common sense

[Abstergo]

I for one would like to see you connect the dots here regarding the DOE. To quote Google (when searching for "doe"): "Governmental department whose mission is to advance energy technology and promote related innovation in the United States." Digging deeper, in About Us, I find: "The Energy Department is working to ensure America's Energy Future, Scientific & Technological Leadership, Nuclear Security and to resolve the environmental legacy of the cold war."

I did some more looking, but found no official reference to a mission of energy isolationism. Perhaps you were there for some backroom discussion before its formation, or maybe I missed a news conference or some official documentation somewhere.

If what you say is true, and their true purpose is to ensure that we never buy energy from another country, then perhaps they did fail. I am curious how they were supposed to go about this mission... Taxation (akin to that of Europe)? Making it illegal to trade with foreign nations?

Re:Common sense

[dr2chase]

Spoken like someone who has never milked a cow.

And did you want healthy drinkable milk, or merely something white and wet?

Re:Common sense

[dr2chase]

You seem to think that our government is uniquely incompetent, then. The rest of the OECD (except for Turkey and Mexico) manage with government-very-involved healthcare that is cheaper, delivers longer life expectancy, and lower infant mortality rates. What's different about our government that makes it unable to do this (as you assert)?

Cancer rates are the wrong question

[WaffleMonster]

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.

Re:Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

But imagine, if you can, what might have been had one or two of the people in those seats been legally allowed to bear arms.

By all accounts the assailant was prepared for precisely that eventuality. There have been a number of public shootings where an armed crowd member may have influenced the outcome positively, but given the particular facts and the nature of the attack here, this seems an extremely poor example to use.

Re:Common sense

[catmistake]

Nuclear Security and to resolve the environmental legacy of the cold war

In 1942, during World War II, the United States started the Manhattan Project, a project to develop the atomic bomb, under the eye of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After the war, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was created to control the future of the project.

The AEC was reinstated and gave way to Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which was tasked with regulating the nuclear power industry, and the Energy Research and Development Administration, which was tasked to manage the nuclear weapon, naval reactor, and energy development programs.

The 1973 oil crisis called attention to the need to consolidate energy policy. On August 4, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 (Pub.L. 95-91, 91Stat.565, enacted August4, 1977), which created the Department of Energy.The new agency, which began operations on October 1, 1977, assumed the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Federal Power Commission, and programs of various other agencies.

wiki

TL;DR, make sure we have enough bomb fuel for the nukes...

"Facts"

[MacGyver2210]

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."

Re:"Facts"

[asylumx]

I'm choosing to ignore this.

Re:Common sense

[azalin]

"'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, " Welcome to the world of the Creationists

The problem is regrettably much larger than larger than just those. Just pick any controversial topic, war on drugs, medicare, global warming...

Re:Common sense

[thegarbz]

What I'm really trying to say is that the notion that all free markets operate according to the law of supply and demand is ridiculous. They don't, not in the ideal textbook case anyway and this is a perfect example of it.

Corporations attempt to maximise profit. If production goes down fixed costs per unit goes up so there's incentive to keep production high even as the price of the product drops.

I find it hard to follow your train of thought, talking about the evil conspiracy of limiting supply so demand increases in the same thread as you mention how the ludicrously cheap the price of natural gas is and why there's a push to increase fracking.

Re:Grant Money

[lightknight]

Right. Because it's not like most people don't question the motives of both.

The reality is that the climate scientists will continue to have their motivations questioned so long as their reports indicate that "more study" (= more money) is required, while energy companies will continue to have their motivations questioned so long as their reports indicate that nothing they do has any impact whatsoever on the local environment (thus drilling / fracking / whatever = more money). In either case, each side is reporting what is considered the most profitable outcome for themselves.

So you see, most people are not inclined to believe either. They believe that both sides are reporting some truth, and some lies.

Re:Common sense

[umghhh]

ohh this good work that is done by so many good energy industry workers is a good argument just to give up any control and let them do what they and their bosses please and any attempt to even discuss the problems that fraking in this case bring to life means you are a commie and a science hating asshole. Well done.

I have a problem with all the BS that comes out of green movement frequently enouff but I also have problems with people like you who out of the fact that we need energy deduce that we shall allow gas industry in this case do what they want because - yes because of what? If nobody complained they would have been dumping polluted water into rivers as they did because it is cheaper that way.

You ruin your point yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Finding fault != finding truth

[Yvanhoe]

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.

Re:Common sense

[WaywardGeek]

As I'm sure you know, the nuke site also has the nation's largest storage pools for nuclear waste, which is one reason they're keen on expanding here. It wouldn't bother me that much, but the plant seems to be run by Homer Simpson. I wish they'd take the billions of dollars in old school nuclear expansion and funnel it into some decent molten salt reactor R&D.

Re:Common sense

[Attila Dimedici]

All of the "official reasons" you find for the Department of Energy are things that were being done by some other government agency at the time the Department of Energy was created, so those would not be reasons to create the Department. Second, it was not necessary to be part of some "backroom discussion" in order to know what the purpose for creating the Department of Energy.. I was alive and paying attention to the news in 1977 when Jimmy Carter signed the law creating the Department of Energy. Jimmy Carter, and other politicians, in pushing Congress to pass the law creating the Department of Energy spent quite a bit of time touting how it would help the U.S. reduce its dependence of foreign energy.
The idea was that by centralizing the various federal agencies that dealt with energy under one department and making that department a cabinet level department it would be possible to create a federal policy that would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy supplies. It was never spelled out how this would be accomplished.

Re:Motivated reasoning?

[dontmakemethink]

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.

Re:Common sense

[umghhh]

These "state level departments of environmental resources (or equivalent)" are better than one EPA because they just create 51 different sets of rules together with 51 sets of loopholes right? I suppose this may be better only if you take that one agency takes less bribes in total from EXXON and the likes than all state agencies would have done. That may or not be true of course. If I were a citizen with as well as a citizen without allegiance to energy industry I would still prefer to have one sets of rules - it makes life easier and in total saves some taxes as you do not have to have so many 'experts' to be paid. Me thinks.

Re:Common sense

[flyneye]

I'd like to add for Mr.Vengoshs benefit, something he seems to be clueless about, per the statement he made. People will continue to rely on their belief systems as long as they remain afraid.You represent to them a probable "paid off" flunky who will say anything he is told. Therefore, you are missing the trust factor necessary to calm their fears and make them receptive to your "information". Funny, since I KNOW fracking to be an uncontrollable procedure with regard to fault lines and the earthquake I personally experienced, your words seem like so much empty shit to me as well.
        I wouldn't go around working for untrustworthy sources in the future if I were you. If you want to be believed, NEVER WORK FOR LIARS. It wouldn't matter if you discovered the cure for cancer tomorrow if you were working for an oil company, people would be afraid it would just kill them faster than cancer. It could be a wise decision to filter your clientele, if you ever want to be taken seriously as a scientist EVER AGAIN.

Re:Lighting your tap water on fire

[WOOFYGOOFY]

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking/affirming-gasland

pdf at bottom.

Yeah, that should do it.

Re:Common sense

[Smallpond]

I don't know of any republicans that want to completely abolish the EPA.

Newt Gingrich, John McCain, Dan Coats, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Orrin Hatch have all backed legislation to abolish the EPA.

BUGGER THE FRACKING SCIENCE

[Crypto Gnome]

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.

Re:Common sense

[Attila Dimedici]

The main problem with your argument is that we don't have one agency with one set of regulations. We have 50 state agencies AND the EPA. An additional problem with the EPA is that you end up with "one size fits all" regulations. Situations are different in different parts of the country. A regulation that is a good idea in one area may be a bad idea in another. In addition, state level agencies will be more responsive to voter preferences than a federal level agency because it does not take as many irate individuals to change the laws overseeing a state agency as it does a federal agency.
Having one federal agency makes life easier for large corporations, but does not really do anything for a small business that only operates in a single state. For a small business that operates in a single state, it will be easier to get their legitimate concerns addressed. It will also be easier for a private citizen to get their concerns addressed by a state level agency than by a federal agency. A single federal agency makes good sense if you favor large corporations. Separate state agencies make better sense if you favor small business over large corporations.

Re:Common sense

[dbIII]

Politics and maybe a few more decades of research before even the practicalities of how to do it on a large scale are clear. Don't fret though, India is following that interesting thorium lead, so your "lost secret of the ancients" ploy is misplaced.

Re:Common sense

[Electricity Likes Me]

You do realize my post was talking about healthcare right?

And that gun rights was not mentioned...anywhere.

Re:Common sense

[dbIII]

That makes sense now. Reagan's campaign donations were dependant on foreign energy supplies so it's no surprise it stalled.

Re:Grant Money

[Hatta]

I know. It's like those greedy scientists don't care about anything but money. That's why they went into science after all.

Public scrutiny and regulation mean that's no long

[oh_my_080980980]

Because that worked so well before......

Re:Common sense

[cheesybagel]

If by molten salt you mean hot sodium or fluorine that is really nasty and corrosive stuff. Modern PWRs are much less tricky to clean up if they leave a mess. The only advantage of a molten salt reactor is that you can use it as a breeder reactor and you get more energy out the uranium. The only safe alternative to PWRs I can think of are the lead-bismuth reactors similar to what the Russians used in some of their nuclear powered subs and the pebble bed reactors.

Re:Common sense

[Attila Dimedici]

Citation needed

Re:Common sense

[PopeRatzo]

I find it hard to follow your train of thought, talking about the evil conspiracy of limiting supply so demand increases in the same thread as you mention how the ludicrously cheap the price of natural gas is and why there's a push to increase fracking.

Yes, I noticed that too.

I'm not so sure that the fracking is about current production so much as it's about future production. I guess there are differences between the oil/gasoline side and natural gas side.

I wonder how much of the natural gas is used for heating. Most of it, I suppose. Since energy corporations are making contingencies for global warming, I wonder... I guess I have to look at it more closely.

Re:Common sense

[dbIII]

It's not just a wild unfounded guess, it's a lame joke so give up on your "citation needed" bullshit.
I've got no idea why the DoE didn't continue a program of energy independence under Reagan, to be serious I'd speculate it would have been nothing more than the cuts he made all over the place, but either way multinational oil companies that were large donors to Reagan benefitted, even if it was just by coincidence - hence the lame joke.

Re:Common sense

[tbannist]

I don't know of any republicans that want to completely abolish the EPA.

I suspect that's because you don't want to know about them.
Bashing E.P.A. Is New Theme in G.O.P. Race
Senate Republicans Introduce Bill To Abolish The EPA
Public Rejects GOP Push to Eliminate EPA
Bachmann pledges to have the EPA's 'doors locked and lights turned off'
GOP on abolishing the EPA

The last link is a video where a number of Republicans are allowed to speak freely about what they think should be done with the EPA.

Re:Grant Money

[asylumx]

so long as their reports indicate that "more study" (= more money) is required

You're implying that there is a scientist worth a salt out there who would actually say "That's it, we've learned all there is to learn about the universe (or any specific topic)!"

That's a very naive idea.

Re:Common sense

[__aaltlg1547]

no, they're not welcome

we need to hold the propagandized fool's feet to the fire of the stupid things they believe

by which i mean: they should get an earful of what their toxic stupid social and economic policy beliefs actually result in, before we as well have to suffer for their idiocy

It's unclear whether you're referring to the toxic social and economic beliefs of the right or the left or what you think those toxic beliefs are.

Confirmation bias...

[beaverdownunder]

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.

yes

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:yes

[khallow]

i said lack of regulatio ns 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

I already addressed that. Either they enforce those regulations and end the oil industry or they don't and it leads to the current situation. It'd be better to have no regulation at all aside from liability and deal with such things through liability and insurance.

Re:Common sense

[jmorris42]

> Guns don't make people safer, if you're taken by surprise then you're fucked, armed or not.

Yea, they aren't magic wands, only useful tools. If you aren't in favor of them if there is any scenario where they won't help then I don't think you are bebating in good faith.

> I notice you're sexist as well, I suppose it's inconceivable that a woman could be the brave one.

Only in a suicidal society. Men are expendable, that is our function. Women are brave when they must. If they find themselves the last line between defending their children they can usually be depended upon to give a good account of themselves. There is an order in the world, whether politically correct fools see it anymore makes no difference to the universe other than to the relentless forces of evolution which will correct the problem.

Re:Common sense

[jmorris42]

No, your post was about helplessly waiting and depending upon the government to solve every problem. Since the direct rebuttal had already been well made I choose to take it up a notch and go after the underlying assumption. Americans are quite capable (even after a century of attack on the values responsible) of taking care of ourselves and our community without waiting for Great White Father in Washington to wipe our noses. We can bury our dead, heal our wounded and if we can seize our govenmment back and make it get the hell out of our way, we can put down our mad dogs when the time comes.

Re:Motivated Reasoning

[hoboroadie]

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.

What about the potential for earthquakes?

[vashek165]

Just curious - what about the earthquakes reported to have been caused by fracking?

Re:Common sense

[santiagoanders]

The "rational?" Seriously? Are we talking about mathematics?

Re:Common sense

[Jungle guy]

Syria has been a de facto "gun-included" country for the past months. Everybody, and their brother, carries a weapon there, and on June more than 2,5 thousand people died there (an average of more than 90 people per day). To put things in perspective: for every fatal victim of this shooting, 7 syrians died EVERY DAY. And this was repeated for several months, and the killings there are still happening. Sorry, but this teorethical cenario is not convincing to me, considering current events and historical examples, on United States and other countries.

i'm supposed to be nice

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:i'm supposed to be nice

[circletimessquare]

dude, i totally fell for the poe's law effect on that one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Re:i'm supposed to be nice

[khallow]

See, the broke drunk can't afford all the nice safety features in modern cars.

I don't see that as being even remotely relevant, especially when you use the words "drunk" and "cars" in the same sentence.

The poor drunk can't afford to operate an oil well either. Which eliminates them as a consideration for regulation and liability for oil wells.

Re:i'm supposed to be nice

[khallow]

but you're a fucking moron. the regulations need to be enforced

I imagine "need" here doesn't mean what you think it means.

poor people with a destroyed environment for generations can't fight corporate lawyers with deep pockets and political connections

If you have a society where you don't have to pay for harm you caused, then you have a society which can't be regulated.

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

If you don't have a government which can enforce liability, then you don't have a government that can implement such regulation.

And drunks can't afford to operate oil wells. What is a problem for the automobile, namely that someone can get behind the wheel and irresponsibly harm others without having even remotely the ability to pay back, is far less of a problem with oil wells. If you don't have insurance or post a bond, then it's hell of a lot easier to keep you from drilling a well. It's not like throwing back some hard liquor, getting behind a wheel, and turning a key. You have to put up infrastructure.

Re:i'm supposed to be nice

[circletimessquare]

ok, i'm not falling for the troll this time

Re:Common sense

[WaywardGeek]

I think you're confusing molten salt reactors with liquid metal fast breeder reactors. Every molten metal fast breeder program has resulted in failure.

Molten salt reactors are passively safe. If they get too hot, the molten salt melts a plug and drains into a storage tank where it cools and solidifies. Unlike PWRs, nothing's under pressure, greatly reducing risk and cost. Cost adjusted for inflation, the US spent only $35M on the technology before shutting it down for political reasons. The program far exceeded it's goals and expectations, though there was a costly mistake due to ignorance of what could go wrong when it was shut down, resulting in something like a $150M cleanup effort later on.

Re:Common sense

[pnutjam]

Not to mention the hucksters that set up fake charities to skim dollars from the generous and naive.

Puns

[shuntedd]

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?

Re:Common sense

[pnutjam]

I would have been pissed if anyone near me started shooting back. Sounds like an easy way to get a lot of hot lead headed your way.

The correct response is to keep your head and use the cover of darkness to flank your opponent. Too many people lose their head and think only of survival, having a gun would not help them and would hurt those around them.

One person with a cool head has been the deciding factor in many shooting incidents.
That being said, this guy was really prepared and responding to his attack may have been the equivalent of storming the Maginot Line.

Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Common sense

[pnutjam]

Despite my above comment, I support gun rights. I, however, see no need to carry a gun on my person at all times and I doubt the sanity and maturity of those who do. Some prove me wrong, but the majority proves the stereotype.

Re:Common sense

[Khashishi]

Perhaps this is the original mission of the Department of Energy, but this is not what most Americans want. Do you prefer to have oil wells in your backyard, or in Nigeria? Why exhaust our own resources when we can import resources from other countries and export the pollution? Besides, since petroleum reserves are finite, we have better long-term energy security by not exhausting our own supplies.

the burden of proof

[Khashishi]

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 us?

[asylumx]

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.

Re:Common sense

[PopeRatzo]

Exxon is a public company; there is no need to "guess". In the first quarter of this year, Exxon's income before taxes was $17.515 billion. After taxes, it was $9.799 billion. Almost half of their income goes to taxes. For the "last three years", the number would probably approach $100 Billion

Sadly, no. In 2009 (which is why I chose "last three years") Exxon paid a negative tax rate of -.38% (meaning it got money from the government of the United States). Now, it did pay taxes, just none of it to the IRS. Of the $15 billion it made in '09, all of the revenue went into overseas and offshore tax havens.

If you include 2010 and 2011 in which they paid an effective rate of about 12%, their total taxes is not even close to $100Billion. The actual number, on average for those three years, is about 8% and that is before you get to the sheltered money, tax write-downs, etc.

By percentage, they pay less than 1/3 of what I pay. And also by percentage, they probably use 100x the level of gov't services, if you include our wars, having the US fleet protect them in the Middle East and South America, etc.

So sorry, the level of taxes that Exxon pays is not, as the original poster stated, "shocking", unless you are shocked that they do so little to support the society that allows them to operate as they do.

Re:Common sense

[mosb1000]

I was referring to liquid metal cooled fast reactors. It isn't clear at this point whether thorium reactors can achieve high enough breeding ratios to be viable.

Re:Motivated reasoning?

[mcgrew]

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?

Re:Common sense

[Archangel Michael]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mort.svg

All I have is anecdotal evidence. I have family that lives in France, and they don't get nearly the same medical care we get here in the US. My Wife's Uncle just died of massive hemorrhaging because he didn't want to go to the hospital because of how bad it really is. Her Grandmother came to the states for a visit, and had HUGE lesions on her legs that the doctors there wouldn't or couldn't treat. After a month of US care, they were all but gone.

I don't want European Health Care, it sucks from what little I've seen of it.

Yeah, you don't hear the horror stories of how bad things really are in the news, all you hear is "Free Health Care". Anyone selling you something for "free" is a huckster. There is no such thing as "free"

Re:Common sense

[dr2chase]

But the statistics contradict your anecdote, and who cares what the blow-dried airheads on the "news" say? What matters to me is statistics, and the bigger the sample, the better.

France has the longer life expectancy (they do, 81.46 years vs US 78.49), so they must be doing something right in a really big way. This same pattern holds across multiple (49 other) countries, too; the simplest explanation is that we're doing something wrong in the US.

I don't want to seem uncaring about your family's particular medical problems, but it really does seem like the statistics win and your family just had terrible luck. It's hard to screw up statistics involving death -- it's not like we use different definitions in different places. I've poked at the numbers more than a little looking for alternate explanations (is it our crappy infant mortality rate that? No, that's not a large enough effect. Are we using different definitions of "infant mortality"? Sometimes, but it appears not to be a big difference -- expected biases in "miscarriage" do not appear.)

Re:Grant Money

[Black Parrot]

so long as their reports indicate that "more study" (= more money) is required

You're implying that there is a scientist worth a salt out there who would actually say "That's it, we've learned all there is to learn about the universe (or any specific topic)!"

That's a very naive idea.

People who feel a strong need to deny facts that scientists discover develop a lot of funny ideas about scientists.

But in the world of "fair & balanced", fact and fantasy get equal standing, as do experts and morons, statesmen and assholes, reality and propaganda.

Re:Common sense

[PopeRatzo]

Why do progressives get so upset when progressive tax rates are applied to them?

Hey, I'm not a bit upset about paying more taxes so that jmorris42 can survive. I don't dodge taxes, I don't even deduct charitable donations on my taxes (my dad taught me that if you expect some benefit from your charity, it's not charity).

I'm just responding to jmorris42's complaints about "all the welfare", and reminded him that he's one of the takers.

Re:Common sense

[Electricity Likes Me]

Well, evidently with 20 million people uninsured and your overall health outcomes, you can't heal your wounded.

Gotta disagree with this assertion at least....

[King_TJ]

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?

Re:Gotta disagree with this assertion at least....

[tbannist]

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.

This is exactly the problem, the only reason libertarians quibble with the science is to derail discussion of the solutions because they don't like any of the solutions. That's wrong, they are endangering the public to push a political goal. Libertarians don't want to discuss the solutions because they know that accepting climate change means accepting that libertarianism doesn't work.

I think they're simply of the opinion that it's BAD policy to spend millions of tax dollars

You don't need the words "millions of", or the test of the sentence to sum up libertarian ideology. Libertarians are opposed to the collecting and spending of tax dollars for any reason except for the protection of private property.

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?

At least some of them do. That falls into the category of so blindingly obvious, that it is absolutely sure that it has been considered multiple times. The "potential new farmable land" is not very good for growing crops, much of it has been scoured by glaciers, has very little native plant coverage, has no well adapted staple crops, and is significantly different in season and daylight from the lands that currently grow the majority of the world's food. That's just from basic geography. As an example of how much worse the land is. consider that Iowa produces more grain than Canada. It's possible with a lot of work that we may be able to adapt crops and compensate for the lost crop lands, but we're trading known good areas for bad areas with an unknown maximum potential. Most of the world's food comes from a handful of crops that evolved and were domesticated in the fertile crescent in the Middle East. There is little chance that we will come out ahead on the deal.

Re:Gotta disagree with this assertion at least....

[King_TJ]

You sure do have some simplistic assumptions about what libertarians think.....

EG. "Libertarians are opposed to the collecting and spending of tax dollars for any reason except for the protection of private property." Really? So you feel their party platform advocates taxation specifically for the purpose of private property protection? That's simply incorrect. It's far more accurate to say they're interested in a minimal government which only performs the duties outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That includes such things as production of a central currency and ensuring the protection of the nation's borders ... not just ensuring a police force is funded to protect your personal possessions from theft or vandalism.

And by extension, there's no fundamental reason a libertarian would find his/her philosophy invalidated if "climate change" was proven to be real. Again, it's more of the original question I asked in my first post on this topic. How do we know we're capable of legislating/mandating changes which would be effective in fixing the problem in a useful time-frame? The United States can't control what the rest of the world does with energy production. If China decides to burn a bunch of coal for the next 75 years because they need the energy and they're unconcerned about the air pollution it creates? What good is it for Americans to suffer higher taxes and more expensive energy costs in the name of "trying to control climate change with cleaner alternatives"?

Libertarians feel people look to their government far too often to give them solutions to their problems (or perceived problems), vs. attempting to deal with the problems themselves first. I'm pretty certain, for example, that when farmers realize they're struggling to keep their crops alive due to a warming climate -- they're not going to sit around, doing things the same way they've always done them and putting blind faith in the idea things will "turn around" on their own. Like all intelligent human beings, they'll look for solutions. Maybe we'll start growing more crops underground using artificial lighting powered by solar panels on the surface, where the crops themselves used to be? I don't know ... but I have faith in people to come up with solutions to their own dilemmas. And I know it's usually a less efficient way of doing things to wait for somebody else to solve your problems for you.

Re:Gotta disagree with this assertion at least....

[tbannist]

EG. "Libertarians are opposed to the collecting and spending of tax dollars for any reason except for the protection of private property." Really? So you feel their party platform advocates taxation specifically for the purpose of private property protection? That's simply incorrect.

On the contrary, it's exactly correct.

It's far more accurate to say they're interested in a minimal government which only performs the duties outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That includes such things as production of a central currency and ensuring the protection of the nation's borders ... not just ensuring a police force is funded to protect your personal possessions from theft or vandalism.

All of which is an extension of the prime directive of libertarianism: protecting private property. The maintenance of a stable currency protects monetary wealth which is private property, the maintenance of an army protects private property from foreign governments, the maintenance of a police force protects private property from domestic groups.

And by extension, there's no fundamental reason a libertarian would find his/her philosophy invalidated if "climate change" was proven to be real.

The Heartland Institute disagrees, they think that an acceptance of climate change and the predicted consequence, government action to resolve the crisis will severely undermine the libertarian cause in America. Some of their senior staff have gone so far as to admit that the only reason they oppose climate change at all, is because of the political consequences it would have for the libertarian movement. At a big picture level, climate change punches a giant hole in libertarianism. It's a market failure that could jeopardise the lives of billions, if everyone acting in their own best interest can jeopardise everyone's best interests, then the central claims of libertarianism are demonstrated false. It's the counter-example that proves that libertarianism can't work, and conversely that collectivism not only can work, but is necessary. Mostly, I think they're afraid of it being resolved and having someone write another "Atlas Shrugged" that puts a bullet in Libertarianism instead of Communism.

Climate change represents an existential threat of libertarianism that many libertarians will never be able to see because their ideological blinders prevent them from even recognising the problem. They already "know" that climate change can't be a real problem because they "know" that the markets can't fail.

The United States can't control what the rest of the world does with energy production. If China decides to burn a bunch of coal for the next 75 years because they need the energy and they're unconcerned about the air pollution it creates? What good is it for Americans to suffer higher taxes and more expensive energy costs in the name of "trying to control climate change with cleaner alternatives"?

It's too bad there are never any international conferences where countries around the world could gather and hammer out a treaty to deal with climate change. China imports coal to burn in their power plants, if the countries selling the coal to China raise the price, China will switch to cheaper alternatives. Of course, that's a red herring, because China is now one of the world's biggest producers of solar panels.

Libertarians feel people look to their government far too often to give them solutions to their problems (or perceived problems), vs. attempting to deal with the problems themselves first.

Of course they do, because the Libertarian view point is that people should always deal with problems themselves. It's like asking an abolitionist how much is too much, the answer is obvious before the question is asked.

I'm pretty certain, for example, that when farmers realize they're struggling to keep the

Looks like I had to dumb it down even more

[dbIII]

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".

Re:Looks like I had to dumb it down even more

[khallow]

If you can't operate without breaking laws and your own industry association drafts the laws

You're begging the question. Another answer is that the industry may contribute, but it isn't the sole "drafter" of those laws. In that case, you can indeed have all sorts of regulations that are extremely difficult to fulfill and still keep a business. Liability regulation and step ladders are a notorious combination.

Re:Common sense

[Urkki]

If they can get the word out about their needs, they stand a very good chance of receiving enough in donations to not only pay their medical expenses, but also pay off their mortgage and retire comfortably.

So, are you saying that's the state of American health care? If you have friends/relatives who'll beg for public support after you get hospitalized in a tragedy which gets enough publicity, then lucky you, the generous American public will help you! But if these conditions aren't met, poor you... Really?

Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

. Katrina and New Orleans is the template for things to come.

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.

It's pretty much the whole reason libertarian groups are funding anti-climate change campaigns.

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.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

. Katrina and New Orleans is the template for things to come.

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.

It would help your understanding if you read the entire paragraph, I wasn't talking about hurricane strength or frequency, but about the consequences of failing to maintain the infrastructure.

It's pretty much the whole reason libertarian groups are funding anti-climate change campaigns.

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.

That's fine, libertarians should argue that point, however, for strategic reasons, groups like the Heartland Institute are attacking the science (science that they actually believe is true) for the sole reason of preventing an honest discussion of solutions. The goal appears to be to force everyone else to accept the libertarian do-nothing solution which, if you stop and think about it, is an ironic betrayal of libertarian principles.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

I wasn't talking about hurricane strength or frequency, but about the consequences of failing to maintain the infrastructure.

You were talking about them as a harbinger of things to come, but such things already came worse than today.

roups like the Heartland Institute are attacking the science (science that they actually believe is true) for the sole reason of preventing an honest discussion of solutions.

That's already being done. You can't even raise a question these days without being attacked as a heretic. Even if you agree with AGW, attempts to say political priorities are wrong are met with derision, as what happened to Lomborg when he said we shouldn't divert money from health and education to ostensibly address AGW.

His Holiness Al Gore has already stated "the debate is over." To him, it's "not a matter of theory," and any skepticism is "bullshit" (those are quotes of his). There can be no more questioning. The Truth has been delivered by the Prophet (PBUH).

The goal appears to be to force everyone else to accept the libertarian do-nothing solution

The goal is to prevent massive increases in government power, massive intrusions on the rights of the people, massive damage to our economy, and massive forced confiscations of wealth to be given those who can figure out a way to hitch a ride on the AGW gravy train.

We have foreign governments saying they are owed trillions (about a gazillion times their GDP), claiming redistribution is the key to the solution. We have crony capitalism right here at home with Obama blowing half a billion of our dollars on the "renewable" energy schemes of his campaign bundlers, when the government beancounters said that investment shouldn't be made. The only thing renewable here is the corruption of the AGW politicians.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

The goal appears to be to force everyone else to accept the libertarian do-nothing solution

The goal is to prevent massive increases in government power, massive intrusions on the rights of the people, massive damage to our economy, and massive forced confiscations of wealth to be given those who can figure out a way to hitch a ride on the AGW gravy train.

Those are arguments justifying ignoring libertarian values to force a collectivist response to prevent people from agreeing on a collectivist response. In effect, it's morally evil by libertarian standards and everyone else's as well.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

In effect, it's morally evil by libertarian standards and everyone else's as well.

Libertarians are using freedom of speech to try to prevent the use of force against others (confiscation of possession, enrichment of others through that confiscation, controlling of individual behavior). This is a very libertarian ideal.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

Libertarians are using deception and fraud to prevent a proper discussion of the issue, therefore unethical by their own standards. You're essentially claiming that the ends justify the means.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

Libertarians are using deception and fraud to prevent a proper discussion of the issue,

I notice "proper." In the eyes of the AGW proponents, the only proper discussion is agreement not only on the science, but on the political priorities (who gets our money, which of our freedoms are curtailed). By your definition, nobody can honestly disagree -- it all must be self-serving deception and fraud since "the debate is over."

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

I notice "proper." In the eyes of the AGW proponents, the only proper discussion is agreement not only on the science, but on the political priorities (who gets our money, which of our freedoms are curtailed). By your definition, nobody can honestly disagree -- it all must be self-serving deception and fraud since "the debate is over."

Nice strawman argument. My definition would be more convincing, if it were my definition. I would define "proper" as honest and rational, but I find it interesting that you claim that my argument that we should be talking about the political priorities and solutions means I think we should skip discussing them. You seem to be doing your best to prove me right, and you have my thanks for conceding the argument so effectively.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

I would define "proper" as honest and rational

"the debate is over" "the science is settled" [all contrary arguments are] "bullshit".

Honest and rational, from the leader of your side. "The debate is over" not only applies to those who question the science, but also those who question the political prorities. The Debate Is Over. The High Priest Al Gore has ruled. Honest and rational discussion that contravenes the Scriptures is heresy and will not be tolerated.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

Honest and rational, from the leader of your side.

Did I tell you who my leader is? Or what side I'm on? Are there just two sides?

"The debate is over" not only applies to those who question the science, but also those who question the political prorities. The Debate Is Over. The High Priest Al Gore has ruled. Honest and rational discussion that contravenes the Scriptures is heresy and will not be tolerated.

Again, you prove my point. Instead of engaging in an honest, rational discussion, you hurl accusations and attack arguments I have not made. A reasonable person would have to conclude you are very bad at this, or you are trying to prove my argument is correct.

Furthermore, the quote you cite is actually: "If you look at the peer reviewed scientific literature, the debate is over." The full context directly contradicts the interpretation you have repeated over and over, thus proving my point again because you have deliberately removed context from the quote to change its meaning for propaganda purposes. Using deception to manipulate people into doing your will is fundamentally unethical according to the moral standards of libertarianism. So why do you do it?

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

Furthermore, the quote you cite is actually: "If you look at the peer reviewed scientific literature, the debate is over." The full context directly contradicts the interpretation you have repeated over and over, thus proving my point again because you have deliberately removed context from the quote to change its meaning for propaganda purposes.

Nothing out of context there. He says the debate is over, period. No contrary arguments allowed, no research that strays from his conclusions allowed. He calls such attempts "bullshit."

So what do you think about his quote, "it's not a matter of theory"? I believe such thinking doesn't belong in the debate, but that's the way Gore thinks. Is my stating that out of context? Dishonest?

So why do you do it?

I don't. A key feature of the AGW crowd, and indeed many liberals (new fascist liberals, not classical liberals), is that anyone who honestly disagrees must be a bad person, dishonest, with ill intent. Thus you will view any contrary statement I make through that lens.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

Nothing out of context there.

That seems dishonest because the quote explicitly contradicts your conjecture.

He says the debate is over, period.

No he said "If you look at the peer reviewed scientific literature, the debate is over", when you deliberately misquote, it looks pernicious.

No contrary arguments allowed, no research that strays from his conclusions allowed.

Of course, he didn't actually say that. That's a straw man argument that you've created (or read elsewhere and repeated). Given that Al Gore has no actual role in the funding for Climate Change research, I find it difficult to see how he could enforce that rule.

He calls such attempts "bullshit."

Specifically he said "They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!"

It seems he's calling bullshit on people who pretend to be scientists and spread misinformation.
It's not volcanoes
It's not sun spots
It is getting warmer

Most people would agree that calling bullshit on someone telling lies is reasonable.

So what do you think about his quote, "it's not a matter of theory"?

Here's a full quote: ""I want to be polite to you. The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a 'on the one hand, on the other hand' issue. It's not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake."

Once again, it sounds like he's talking about the scientific issues, and not the political ones. Not one of the three quote you provided supports your claim.

I believe such thinking doesn't belong in the debate, but that's the way Gore thinks.

So you want to tell people how they can think? That doesn't seem very libertarian, and given that Gore's statements do not say what you claim they say, I seriously doubt that your guesses about what he's thinking are accurate either. Of course, debate must always end, and the side losing the debate rarely wants to concede that it's over, especially if there is ideology at stake.

Is my stating that out of context? Dishonest?

Quite clearly, yes and yes.

I don't. A key feature of the AGW crowd, and indeed many liberals (new fascist liberals, not classical liberals), is that anyone who honestly disagrees must be a bad person, dishonest, with ill intent.

Of course, you realise that statement appears hypocritical because you are essentially accusing everyone you disagree with of being intellectually dishonest, bad people because they believe everyone they disagree with is intellectually dishonest, bad people. Furthermore, I have made no claims about your moral character, what I have said is that dishonest behaviour is inconsistent with libertarian beliefs. It is a failure to live up to your own ideals.

Thus you will view any contrary statement I make through that lens.

That's possible, though I doubt it. As far I can see I've only criticised your dishonest statements and I provided the evidence that proves that they are dishonest. You may believe what you're saying, you might even be correct in your estimate of Al Gore, however, the evidence you provide to support your accusations has been taken out of context so that the meaning can be manipulated to support accusations that the context clearly demonstrates are incorrect. That behaviour certain fits the English definition of dishonest.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

That seems dishonest because the quote explicitly contradicts your conjecture.

It is perfectly in context and reflects the facts. Gore believes the time for talking and debate is over, the time for action (actions he wants) is now. He believes any delay will produce irreparable harm.

Once again, it sounds like he's talking about the scientific issues, and not the political ones. Not one of the three quote you provided supports your claim.

As you like to point out, context is important.

Al Gore stated that in response to Bjorn Lomborg, who agrees that AGW is happening, but was at the time challenging Gore on the POLITICAL priorities. This was part of Gore's tirade meant to shut up the political opposition. Al Gore does not want debate on the politics. He spits out the "science is settled" phrases whenever anybody disagrees, politically or scientifically.

Quite clearly, yes and yes.

You have the context. Quite clearly in context and completely honest.

That's possible, though I doubt it.

You just did, above. You didn't know the context of Gore's tirade against Lomborg, yet you automatically assumed dishonesty. But the context shows the political, the attempt to stifle dissenting views even where the science is agreed.

Of course, you realise that statement appears hypocritical because you are essentially accusing everyone you disagree with of being intellectually dishonest, bad people because they believe everyone they disagree with is intellectually dishonest, bad people.

No, it is not. Pointing out dishonest behavior is not dishonest. Claiming dishonesty simply because of a disagreement on the science or politics is dishonest.

I have been viciously attacked for opposing hybrid cars, since it is automatically assumed I must hate the environment, be part of the Big Oil conspiracy. Yet I don't like them because they are overly-complex kludge stopgaps that still use gasoline. I like pure electric cars.

I have been viciously attacked for opposing Obamacare. I must be a conservative nutjob in the pay the insurance companies. Yet I like the idea of universal coverage, but believe it can't be instituted using the power of the federal government because of constitutional limitations. Unlike most people, I don't believe that what I want has the power to override the Constitution. Amend the Constitution, or do it using an inter-state agreement, and my basic conceptual opposition disappears.

In neither case could the liberals even comprehend the possibility that I could have a rational argument against their beloved causes. Dishonesty, or at least me being an idiot, must be the cause for the disagreement.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

You just did, above. You didn't know the context of Gore's tirade against Lomborg, yet you automatically assumed dishonesty. But the context shows the political, the attempt to stifle dissenting views even where the science is agreed.

I still don't agree with your characterisations, I find them misleading and dishonest. You consistently over-reach what the evidence says to push forward an extremely biased view. It still looks to me like Gore is refusing to debate the science with Lomborg. It's not clear that he understood (or even cares) what position Lomborg stands for. This one piece of evidence is circumstantial and flimsy. It need more evidence to support your hypothesis. Given that your other quotes don't support your hypothesis, I can't agree to it, and given the deceptive manner in which you cited the quotes, it does give the appearance of dishonest behaviour on your part. If you had, from the start, cited Al Gore's refusal to debate Lomborg itself as your reason, rather than quoting a few words from the rejection without context, I would merely consider your evidence unconvincing and not dishonest.

No, it is not. Pointing out dishonest behavior is not dishonest.

It is, if the dishonest behaviour does not exist.

Claiming dishonesty simply because of a disagreement on the science or politics is dishonest.

Yes, it would be, if it occurred. Yet, you accuse anyone who believes in that AGW is happening of being dishonest. Gross generalisations of that sort should set off alarm bells. It's extremely unlikely that everyone you disagree with is uniformly dishonest.

In neither case could the liberals even comprehend the possibility that I could have a rational argument against their beloved causes. Dishonesty, or at least me being an idiot, must be the cause for the disagreement.

Here's a clue: That's not a property of liberals, it's a property of people who disagree with you on the Internet. I suggest you perform some experiments and try posting some blatantly pro-AGW comments on WUWT or another climate change denial web site or go to conservative web sites and post comments about how great Obamacare is or how great electric cars are. There are idiots and asses on every side of every issue.

Additionally, if you were better at communicating your ideas, fewer people would think you're an idiot. This is 10th or 11th post in this debate between us, and only now have you presented a real argument to support your position. If you've done similarly poorly on the other issues you cited, it would be no wonder they assumed you were dishonest or stupid. This conversation has been incredibly tedious, and you may noticed that I have remarked multiple times on the poor quality of your debating form. If you can't be bothered to communicate clearly and concisely, you shouldn't blame others for misunderstanding you.

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[Quila]

I still don't agree with your characterisations, I find them misleading and dishonest. You consistently over-reach what the evidence says to push forward an extremely biased view. It still looks to me like Gore is refusing to debate the science with Lomborg.

You before: Context matters, context matters, you are taking things out of context so you're dishonest.

Me: Here's a quote with perfect context provided.

You now: "It still looks to me like Gore is refusing to debate the science with Lomborg."

Now, when context is very important, you ignore context.

It's not clear that he understood (or even cares) what position Lomborg stands for.

Lomborg (who is, BTW, an extreme leftist by American standards) had been hounding Gore for quite a long time before this incident, trying to get Gore to debate him on the political issue. He was at the time one of Gore's most prominent and well-known opponents. Gore knew who he was and what he stood for. There's even more context for you.

Yet, you accuse anyone who believes in that AGW is happening of being dishonest.

Talk about dishonesty, I didn't say that. I said their treatment of skeptics in ways I showed is dishonest.

or how great electric cars are.

I posted that on an extremely conservative forum. There were a few automatic negative reactions due to the stigma the left has attached to these cars; as South Park put it, the issue with them polluting the land with toxic "smug." But once I stated logical reasons for how one would be beneficial in *my* case, all were in agreement on the principle. Those who drove a lot in a day or had to haul things, did mention, quite factually, that the current electrics wouldn't work for them.

It was just a matter of having people willing to actually listen to the facts laid out and honestly reevaluate their posiitons based on them. Apparently, that is an ability missing in certain liberals on this forum.

Additionally, if you were better at communicating your ideas, fewer people would think you're an idiot.

When shown you're dishonest and closed-minded, lash out with personal attacks. Well done. Now where did I put that can of Troll-B-Gone?

Re:Funny that Katrina thing

[tbannist]

You before: Context matters, context matters, you are taking things out of context so you're dishonest.

Me: Here's a quote with perfect context provided.

You now: "It still looks to me like Gore is refusing to debate the science with Lomborg."

Now, when context is very important, you ignore context.

You didn't provide context, you provided accusations and assertions with no evidence to support them. From the quote, Al Gore is refusing to debate him on the science. The additional context (that I had to go and find) is ambiguous on why he declined to debate Lomborg. There are other possible reasons that the one you have asserted are true, for example, this article asserts that "Debating Lomborg just elevates Lomborg’s nonsense to higher visibility and degrades the larger conversation." Contrary to your assertion, I'm not ignoring context, I'm simply doubting your accusations. If you consider doubting your position to be inherently dishonest, you will never be able to engage in rational debate.

Talk about dishonesty, I didn't say that. I said their treatment of skeptics in ways I showed is dishonest.

That seems to be splitting hairs, as I don't see much difference between accusing someone of dishonesty, and accusing them of acting dishonestly, however point taken, you have only accused them of acting in ways that you characterise as dishonest.

Lomborg (who is, BTW, an extreme leftist by American standards) had been hounding Gore for quite a long time before this incident, trying to get Gore to debate him on the political issue. He was at the time one of Gore's most prominent and well-known opponents. Gore knew who he was and what he stood for. There's even more context for you.

Again, those are assertions. Evidence to support your assertions would do wonders for the credibility of your argument. I disagree with you, so it should be obvious that I'm rarely going accept your arguments unless they are backed by valid evidence. Doing further research myself, I see that you are correct, Lomberg had been hounding Gore for a while, so Gore most likely knew who he was and what he stands for. However, that doesn't prove your accusations:

"The debate is over" not only applies to those who question the science, but also those who question the political prorities. The Debate Is Over. The High Priest Al Gore has ruled. Honest and rational discussion that contravenes the Scriptures is heresy and will not be tolerated.

You have cited Al Gore refusing to debate one person, unfortunately, that does not actually prove any of the accusations you have made.

It was just a matter of having people willing to actually listen to the facts laid out and honestly reevaluate their posiitons based on them. Apparently, that is an ability missing in certain liberals on this forum.

Like I previously said, that is an ability missing from many people on the Internet, in pretty much every group. One which could just as easily be ascribed to you as to the people you disagree with. It is very easy to affix that label to anyone who doesn't accept your position as truth.

When shown you're dishonest and closed-minded, lash out with personal attacks. Well done.

Is calling someone dishonest and closed-minded not a personal attack? You are the one who wrote: "Dishonesty, or at least me being an idiot, must be the cause for the disagreement." I'm merely pointing out, that there one possible reason "the liberals [couldn't] even comprehend the possibility that I could have a rational argument against their beloved causes" is that you may not have presented "rational argument" in a convincing way. You certainly haven't done a very good job of convincing me that you are rational, intelligent or articulate.

Here's a tip, if you

Re:Common sense

[GNULinuxGuy]

I seriously doubt anyone thinks it will be better in every way. I don't like the idea that most Americans are afraid to go to the doctor because of money. What if they had some seriously dangerous contagious infection, etc? Not taking care of all people in our borders on a basic level is a serious threat to public health.

Use the market

[jago25_98]

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.

Re:Common sense

[Monsuco]

The rational for the creation of the Department of Energy was to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy supplies. The thing is, since the establishment of the Department of Energy, the U.S. has become significantly more dependent on foreign energy supplies. .

Yeah, if by foreign supplies you mean Canada and Mexico. People seem to think the USA buys a lot of oil from the middle east but this just isn't true. Nearly all of the oil America uses comes from North America, Oil is fungible though, so it doesn't matter all that much where the oil we Americans are using comes from since oil is bought and sold on the global market and prices are dictated by global supply and demand. Cheap natural gas provides an alternative to compete with oil and that is bound to be a good thing, not to mention it's also cleaner.

Sadly, I doubt that'll deter the eco-freakos. My little town of Erie, Colorado makes a lot of money from gas. A group called "Erie Rising" has been harrassing the town constantly over fracking. The thing that gets me is most of this group's membership and funding doesn't come from Erie. It's biggest donors seem to be in New York and Pennsylvania. I wish they'd leave my little town alone.