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If a wildfire is coming to burn down your neighborhood, people should evacuate or hope their taxes have paid for a well-equipped, coordinated and informed firefighter response- if everyone takes their hoses and tries to fight the fire, they spend all the water (weakening official response) and lose their houses anyway. This particular wildfire is already well on its way.
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Feb 18, 2012 20:12
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Dreylad posted:Although the major polluters are the democracies, in the case of total CO2 emissions. China might be really turning up their emissions but they're not really relevant to current C02 emissions so far.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
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Feb 18, 2012 20:36
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Strudel Man posted:
He probably meant per capita, not total emissions. EDIT: vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Well yeah, I get that. I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt and saying he must have had a momentary lapse of which was which. If he didn't, then of course he is clearly wrong. pwnyXpress fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Feb 19, 2012 |
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Feb 18, 2012 20:58
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pwnyXpress posted:He probably meant per capita, not total emissions.
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Feb 18, 2012 21:11
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China is a country to pay attention to in terms of their energy situation. More than 80% of their capacity comes from coal, and with their current rate of growth they will not be able to keep relying on fossil fuels up to the end of this century. They've been exploring a large variety of alternatives like renewables and nuclear to deal with the massive problem before it causes their society and all their progress to freeze up. Their renewables sector is comprised almost entirely of wind power and hydroelectric dams. China exports most of its fabricated solar capacity to other countries and can't afford to instal much of it for itself, with only 1.8 GW capacity planned by 2020. Solar has yet to achieve even 1st phase grid parity in China's energy economy, meaning it's too expensive for even the modest home-owner to afford. They've had more success with wind due to their extremely high off-shore wind capacity potential, around 100 GW (~25 GWe average, after applying capacity factor). They've already filled up a quarter of this by now and are looking for more investors and plan to expand their capacity further. Hydroelectricity is huge in China, at almost 200 GW (~70 GWe average, after capacity factor) right now representing 17% of their total electric capacity. Hydro is notoriously cheap and easy to instal, but like Wind it has a limited installable capacity. Despite the availability of capacity for more wind and a bit more hydro, China's construction of new coal plants continues to dwarf renewables at this very moment. The same phenomenon seems to be occuring in almost every other industrialized country as well. The reason to me seems to be purely economics rather than political stupidity or what have you. No matter how you slice it, coal is cheaper and more reliable than wind and solar, and there's only so many more dams that can be built on our rivers and so many wind turbines that can be installed in windy enough places. And finally, solar is just too expensive despite the past decade of hard constant R&D. But what about nuclear? That's the really interresting part for China. They've been pouring an impressive amount of money and effort into developping more advanced nuclear reactors in terms of safety, scalability, and fuel efficiency. The amount of R&D they've committed to nuclear has probably been more in the last couple decades than every other country on earth combined: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63b_china_nuclearfuelcycle.html They're also building a shitload of state-of-the-art reactors right now with plans to increase their nuclear power capacity by almost an entire order of magnitude by 2050 with just the currently planned reactors: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html Note that 1 GWe is equal to 8760 GWh. As of 2007, China's total capacity was 3,280,000 GWh. The projected 400 GWe of nuclear power by 2050 will represent 3,504,000 GWh, in other words, enough to replace the entirety of China's current capacity and then some. And for those wondering about whether all this talk of switching to nuclear is at all feasible for China or even us in the western world, here's a really good article denoting the monetary challenges that countries could be expected to face when trying to replace coal with nuclear: http://www.morssglobalfinance.com/from-coal-to-nuclear-a-look-at-the-numbers/. The costs of nuclear without any sort of policy on fabrication are tremendous due to regulatory costs. Those costs can be drasticly lowered by doing what France did and building standard nuclear reactors (in other words, nearly identical plants), which are faster to approve: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html. Factory-line assembly of small modular reactors would bypass a large amount of regulatory costs (especially in delays), and some Gen IV designs would be scalable enough to achieve modularity. The biggest thing with nuclear, as highlighted in that previous article, is its incredible potential for development. I've hammered this point countless times now but our current reactors are nowhere near their theoretical max efficiencies which leaves a lot of room for improvement. The shear potential density of nuclear power would alow for unimaginable levels of energy production, or more interrestingly, miniaturization, leading to increasingly small battery-like reactors that can provide the same amount of power as a modern coal plant for a fraction of the construction time, material, and fuel costs. The complete use of breeder-fission fuel cycles like the Th-232(n,2β−)U-233 cycle and the U-238(n,2β+)Pu-239 cycle will allow us to use the extremely common fertile isotopes as fuel instead of the rare-as-platinum naturally occuring U235, immediately ensuring we never run out of nuclear fuel. I think these reasons are why China is so willing to bet its energy future on nuclear more than anything else, despite nuclear's percieved bad reputation. And it's important to pay attention because despite the conflict of policies and China not exactly being a bastion of freedom and social rights, the lessons learned there in dealing with their more rapidly approaching crisises could help us out of our own mess.
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Feb 18, 2012 23:50
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It's a shame oil companies are awash with $$$ and they get to spend a little slice of it on PR to keep people from talking about how hosed fossil fuels are.
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Feb 19, 2012 02:55
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Strudel Man posted:
I mean for the last 200 years. China hasn't caught up, and wont for awhile.
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Feb 19, 2012 02:59
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That's interesting about China really. If they end up doing what everyone else 'should' be doing, and using coal and oil as a stepping stone towards a less damaging / consuming energy setup, they'll potentially be the source of some very important technologies in securing future energy sourcesthat are safe and consume much less.
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Feb 19, 2012 03:30
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Dreylad posted:I mean for the last 200 years. China hasn't caught up, and wont for awhile. Because while I suppose I could maybe see an argument from equitability in that, we probably can't afford to let every country get its fair share of cumulative emissions.
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Feb 19, 2012 09:09
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In what way would you propose levelling the playing field for countries that have reaped the rewards of their cumulative emissions. If first world countries are content to say 'gently caress you, got mine' whilst saying that everyone needs to make sacrifices for the greater good, developing countries have a reasonable claim in demanding much greater sacrifice from those countries before they'll consider their own. To do otherwise would be bad governance on behalf of their citizens, as it would set their country in a very weak position compared to those countries that have reaped the benefits already. Of course, if first world rhetoric is still having trouble ACKNOWLEDGING climate change, let alone deciding what needs to be done about, what chance is there that countries can deal with this in the necessary time frame.
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Feb 19, 2012 13:11
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Maluco Marinero posted:In what way would you propose levelling the playing field for countries that have reaped the rewards of their cumulative emissions. If first world countries are content to say 'gently caress you, got mine' whilst saying that everyone needs to make sacrifices for the greater good, developing countries have a reasonable claim in demanding much greater sacrifice from those countries before they'll consider their own. One thing that could be argued is that developing nations wouldn't have their development now if it weren't for the industrial revolution. That said, developed nations are still by and large the leaders in making GBS threads up the atmosphere, so it's not as if developed nations can gang up on China and India and demand they make some pretty large sacrifices. Many nations don't deny climate change is happening, just that they're dragging their heels on doing something about it, or are setting extremely unambitious goals.
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Feb 19, 2012 14:24
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froglet posted:Many nations don't deny climate change is happening, just that they're dragging their heels on doing something about it, or are setting extremely unambitious goals. One could say that the extremely unambitious goals are a form of denial, as in it's just lip service to the idea of us rendering our planet uninhabitable for humans, not actually taking it seriously. I understand it's a hard sell thanks to people normalising their situation. It's very common to find people here in Australia who confuse the cost of living with the cost of lifestyle so hard it's not funny. People out there who genuinely believe that they 'struggle' on a six figure income, blind to the fact that they're just unwilling to make lifestyle sacrifices. There is a not insignificant portion of the public who see any taxation surrounding climate change as heavy handed or unnecessary, and god knows the captains of industry aren't getting behind taxation either. Essentially dealing with climate change is the complete opposite of what our economy currently values, growth. How does this get reconciled politically? Anything that properly acknowledges climate change will inhibit current options for growth until there is a sure bet technology out there that is clearly the way forward.
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Feb 19, 2012 14:57
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Strudel Man posted:I don't...know that I really understand what you mean. Are you saying that their cumulative emissions over the past two centuries are substantially less than that of the U.S. over the same period, and that because of that, their current annual emissions are not really a concern? Total, cumulative. Whatever word you prefer. The point is we don't have any right to tell industrializing nations not to industrialize. The problem up to now has been largely caused by the developed world, and really by the time we hit the breaking point it will still have been caused by the developed world's emissions, not China, or India or any other industrializing nation. What they're emitting now wont have any effect on average global temperature until 20-30 years from now. Now if you could somehow make the industrialization process green, then we might have something to offer. But none of the developing nations are going to be willing to cut their emissions and choke their economy. It's just not going to happen. Any emissions (and geo-engineering) agreement means developed nations will have to take deep cuts.
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Feb 19, 2012 23:28
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Reversal of fortune! http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-insider-exposes-institute-s-budget-and-strategy Looks like a "leaker" has dumped a whole bunch of Heartland institute (You know, the old 1980s tobacco harm denialist group who's team of lawyers and PR experts re-tooled their resumes in the late 90s/early 2000s to become "climate scientists" instead of "cancer researchers") strategy and policy documents have been leaked, and now we can play "lets point and laugh at the PR industry!" These leaks are lots of fun! quote:Development of our "Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms" project. quote:At present we sponsor the NIPCC to undermine the official United Nation's IPCC reports and paid a team of writers $388,000 in 2011 to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered. Expenses will be about the same in 2012. NIPCC is currently funded by two gifts a year from two foundations, both of them requesting anonymity. quote:Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow high-profile climate scientists (such as Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own. This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out. quote:Our current budget includes funding for high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist AGW message. At the moment, this funding goes primarily to Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals, but we will consider expanding it, if funding can be found. Other documents in there outline paralell fuckjobs being done on other campaigns such as on unions in wisconsin etc, but yeah, here it is, a peek inside the mind of the PR industry's continuing campaign against science. e: Oh: http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/19/heartland-institute-sends-legal-notices-publishers-faked-and-stolen-docume These guys havent really been able to decide if the company line is "These documents are forged do not post" or "These documents are stolen do not post". And like the scientologists, who make those claims simultaneously about their leaked poo poo too, its a contradiction that should not be lost on anyone, but has a "stolen" premise that seems more probable than its "forged"premise. Either way, they want to sue people over it. duck monster fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Feb 20, 2012 |
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Feb 20, 2012 03:53
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I think I have an erection.quote:An Open Letter to the Heartland Institute  I don't know what to highlight. Its all excellent.
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Feb 20, 2012 04:50
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duck monster posted:
You want to see our most preeminent researchers, our best hope for a future, having to spend their time engaging constantly with what is first and foremost, a campaign to delay? Maybe the shame of being called out by real scientists and honorable people will have some effect, but I seriously doubt it. I just hope no one forgets the fine men and women of the Heartland Institute (and their backers) when we're rocketing past three degrees C. I don't think that we will.
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Feb 20, 2012 14:13
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Someone has to. Doubt merchants MUST be discredited emphatically, and solidly. Shame PR is often more about who has the cash, than who's right, just like politics.
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Feb 20, 2012 14:30
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Maluco Marinero posted:In what way would you propose levelling the playing field for countries that have reaped the rewards of their cumulative emissions. If first world countries are content to say 'gently caress you, got mine' whilst saying that everyone needs to make sacrifices for the greater good, developing countries have a reasonable claim in demanding much greater sacrifice from those countries before they'll consider their own. I propose we beat coal's price with mass produced nuclear reactors. Export thorium-cycle using reactors to third world countries to avoid any proliferation, and keep a mixed profile of plutonium and thorium cycle reactors for ourselves. The possible advantages to doing all this would be as follows: - Smaller reactors would circumvent a large portion of regulatory costs from delays and approvals, given that the reactors will be mass-produced from a standard, and thus far easier to approve. France's nuclear reactor fleet are almost all identical thanks to standardization, and this has allowed them to build reactors at much lower costs. - The reactors would be much safer. Most of the reactors up for miniaturization are intrinsically safe and don't need operator assistance or external safeties for emergency shutdowns. The breeder-fission design of the thorium and plutonium cycles ensures there is always a limited amount of fissile fuel at any given moment, further reducing the hazard of a meltdown. - Little to no fuel dependance on other countries. Fertile uranium-238 makes up 99.5% of natural uranium and can be used as-is in plutonium cycle reactors. It can be extracted from sea-water and any plain rock easily enough and in high enough yields to be more economical than coal mining. Thorium-232 is the only naturally occuring isotope for its cycle, and is 4 times more common than uranium-238. It can be extracted from any sort of rock, but is most prominent in heavy rare-earth metal deposits like monazite sands, along with its parent minerals Thorite. The fact that any country could go out and extract enough thorium to fuel up their bought reactors on their own makes it an extremely enticing no-strings-attached proposition for them. - Nuclear has already demonstrated 3rd phase parity (essentially being cheaper than coal from construction to fueling) back in its infancy in the 60-70s. Up to 75% of the costs relating to nuclear today are attributed to regulatory racheting. - Breeder-fission fuel cycles can consume our nuclear waste stockpiles as fuel. The plutonium cycle is especially good at doing this. - Nuclear power doesn't produce emissions, and would be potent enough to be used to produce synthetic fuels. There's some challenges however: - The thorium cycle is barely even mentioned in the West, and most of the nuclear industry is entirely built up around the use of uranium-235, particularly due to the enriched fuel sales model. Transition to breeders that use the thorium and plutonium cycles would require a lot of R&D and an infrastructure of specialists and producers that doesn't exist yet. - The production of small modular breeder-fission reactors that use fuel you can extract from almost anywhere will make the current enriched-fuel sales model obsolete. So support from the current nuclear industry is pretty much nil. - Nuclear R&D is unbelievably expensive and sometimes even outright restricted, especially in the US. This is not so much because the prototype reactors and tests themselves are expensive, but because everything needs to be approved by the regulatory comissions, usually requiring large lump sums for approvals. - There's a great deal of hysteria surrounding nuclear that's supported by the media, so it has very little public support for the most part especially in larger cities. This is an issue when it comes to political approval for the most part.
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Feb 20, 2012 14:57
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I agree entirely. It's unfortunate that on one side we have, 'coal is cheap now, let's use it', and on the other it's 'any alternative energy EXCEPT nuclear'. The people pushing support for doing something about climate change won't throw full support behind nuclear, so that movement is going to be like pushing poo poo up hill, but it's probably the best way as long as we give a drat enough to make it work right. To be honest it's one thing that disappoints me about environmentalist positions, although I'm not sure whether it's me or them. The fact that a technology 'can be' used irresponsibly or dangerously tends to write it off in their mind, which I find very very short sighted. Genetically modified foods could hold a lot of potential for future agriculture, yet everyone gets hung up on companies specific use of GM, terminator seeds and the like. I'm sure GM can be used for a whole lot more than economically locking in farmers as customers. Nuclear could prove a useful stop gap, yes the consequences of us loving up nuclear are bad, but so are the consequences of failing to meet energy requirements of our world population, or climate change, or any number of things that are likely to happen if we don't make an attempt to adapt and respond.
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Feb 20, 2012 15:18
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Maluco Marinero posted:Nuclear could prove a useful stop gap, yes the consequences of us loving up nuclear are bad, but so are the consequences of failing to meet energy requirements of our world population, or climate change, or any number of things that are likely to happen if we don't make an attempt to adapt and respond. Not trying to be a hysterical anti-nuclear person, but a few scientists have argued that if everyone uses nuclear the waste heat could warm up the atmosphere much like CO2 is now. The article also acknowledges there may be problems with current renewable technologies (particularly large-scale wind power installations). While problems like that would be a long way off, it is something worth considering. froglet fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Feb 20, 2012 |
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Feb 20, 2012 15:43
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That's fair, there's more being discovered all the time about our options in moving forward. My annoyance is with technology that isn't fully explored being shunned by the very people who NEED good technology that can compete with what we rely on currently. I have little faith that the first world will willingly sacrifice in time, rather they'll be forced. Good technology may be the difference between how good or bad that bit goes.
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Feb 20, 2012 16:09
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froglet posted:Not trying to be a hysterical anti-nuclear person, but a few scientists have argued that if everyone uses nuclear the waste heat could warm up the atmosphere much like CO2 is now. The article also acknowledges there may be problems with current renewable technologies (particularly large-scale wind power installations). This is a bit silly, we would need to be using at least two orders of magnitude(!) more energy than we are now according to that article for there to be any appreciable warming from waste heat. That's comparable to the advancement from a pre-industrial society to now, those future humans have nothing to worry about.
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Feb 20, 2012 16:11
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duck monster posted:
They claim that one of the documents is forged, the others are likely genuine. The faked document contains most of the quotes that actually make Heartland look like Montgomery Burns. edit: A good article from the Atlantic on why that document is almost certainly fake: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/heartland-memo-looking-faker-by-the-minute/253276/
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Feb 20, 2012 18:54
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Office Thug posted:I propose we beat coal's price with mass produced nuclear reactors. Export thorium-cycle using reactors to third world countries to avoid any proliferation, and keep a mixed profile of plutonium and thorium cycle reactors for ourselves. To be more exact here, thorium reactors make proliferation more difficult, but not impossible. A thorium reactor can be used to produce U-233, which can be used to build a bomb. It's not the best bomb material--you need more of it to get the same explosive force than you would using the usual U-235, it's trickier to work with than 235, and it takes longer to breed it in a thorium reactor, but it would be absolutely possible for a country to use a thorium power reactor to produce fissile material for a weapons program.
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Feb 20, 2012 21:15
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ou_LGjjmFI http://energyfromthorium.com/2012/02/20/support-gordon/ A campaign to create a new documentary on Thorium LFTR technology. As far as I can see this is one of the very few, and easily the most promising, technologies which can really save our asses as far as climate change goes. Watch the video, the guy's pretty goony but has a decent sense of humour and isn't terrible at editing - see the 2011 Thorium remix (but remember he wants to do the new one with an actual budget"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4 Office Thug posted:China is a country to pay attention to in terms of their energy situation. More than 80% of their capacity comes from coal, and with their current rate of growth they will not be able to keep relying on fossil fuels up to the end of this century. They've been exploring a large variety of alternatives like renewables and nuclear to deal with the massive problem before it causes their society and all their progress to freeze up. Hey Office Thug, was going to PM you but no go. I know you wrote the OP for the Energy Tech thread, I'd like to ask you to write a Thorium LFTR OP? Reason I ask is that I don't have time (Finals coming up), you've already written a large section of an OP on Thorium in the Energy Tech thread, and I think goons would be interested (and might donate to) the above developments in the Thorium campaign. It would be incredibly cool of you, and might help to make a big difference if you did it right (I'm thinking thread title of 'A Solution for Climate Change - Donate' or some similar hyperbole thing to get peoples' attentions...) e: or just anyone who has the time. I think Thorium deserves its own GBS thread to try and help drum up support for their campaign.
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Feb 20, 2012 21:27
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Maluco Marinero posted:Someone has to. Doubt merchants MUST be discredited emphatically, and solidly. Shame PR is often more about who has the cash, than who's right, just like politics. I'm keeping archives of a lot of these stuff, because I'm convinced in 30-40 years my grandkids are going to want to know who to loving blame, and my strongest hope is they are angry enough to drag the old bastards who orchestrated this denial industry out of their loving old peoples homes and into the dock to face the consequences of what they have wrought. These people who are doing this have names, and I have no intention of those names being forgotten.
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Feb 21, 2012 00:32
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theflyingorc posted:They claim that one of the documents is forged, the others are likely genuine. The faked document contains most of the quotes that actually make Heartland look like Montgomery Burns. One of the other places I was reading made an interesting observation though that the "forged" document has a claim about watts that hasn't been made anywhere else before that in the midst of watts rambling about it being fake, he conceeded that the particular claim is true. Which is interesting , because if its forged, its forged by someone who was inside of the heartlands institute and knew these things.
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Feb 21, 2012 00:38
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duck monster posted:One of the other places I was reading made an interesting observation though that the "forged" document has a claim about watts that hasn't been made anywhere else before that in the midst of watts rambling about it being fake, he conceeded that the particular claim is true. Not true, unfortunately. I just checked the budget document and it specifically mentions $88,000 for ”ITWorks/IntelliWeather to create a website...” This is Anthony Watts' company, and a simple Google search would have clued the forger into this. No piece of information in the strategy document wasn't elsewhere. There is also the error of stating that the contribution from Koch was ear marked for climate change, when it is clearly noted to be for some health advocacy thing elsewhere. The document is almost certainly faked. You're making the error of assuming every dastardly thing claimed about the bad team is true.
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Feb 21, 2012 02:36
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theflyingorc posted:Not true, unfortunately. I just checked the budget document and it specifically mentions $88,000 for ”ITWorks/IntelliWeather to create a website...” The problem is, the only real evidence pointing to its fakeness is legal threats from a panicking organization that claims its faked , but also seems to claim its stolen , and a blog with some person who seems to think pdf metadata has some sort of magical detective abilities. (Seriously, just opening a PDF on OSX lion can reset the metadata to your machine, due to apples retarded autosaving presumptuousness. It just doesn't prove a loving thing. All we know is the other documents appear to have been shat out from Adobe distiller, and this one was scanned from a physical document using an epson scanner, according to the metadata) I mean it seems wierd that someone would go to the effort of stealing a bunch of documents, then forge one to add in that features no new allegations about the groups activities other than them talking about stuff they do openly, which is to say coordinate funding of climate denialists. Why would someone own-goal themselves in such a way? I'm not saying it IS real, but there isn't enough evidence to suggest it ISNT real either. duck monster fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Feb 21, 2012 |
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Feb 21, 2012 03:02
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Chantilly Say posted:To be more exact here, thorium reactors make proliferation more difficult, but not impossible. A thorium reactor can be used to produce U-233, which can be used to build a bomb. It's not the best bomb material--you need more of it to get the same explosive force than you would using the usual U-235, it's trickier to work with than 235, and it takes longer to breed it in a thorium reactor, but it would be absolutely possible for a country to use a thorium power reactor to produce fissile material for a weapons program. You're completely right in saying it's possible, but the amount of time and effort that would be needed to produce excess U-233 from the thorium cycle alone makes it a very bad candidate for bomb-building, not to mention U-233 doesn't behave very well in the fast neutron spectrum, and it always comes with U-232 (through parasitic side reactions when breeding, and through natural decay) which is part of a chain of very high energy gamma radiation decays. That U-232 is also waving a giant sign saying "HERE I AM!" to anything tuned to pick up high energy EM frequencies from nuclear detonations. I say impossible in the sense that it's very, very unlikely anyone would bother using the thorium cycle to make U-233 for nuclear weapons, they would almost definitely opt for breeding plutonium and enriching uranium-235 instead. I like to compare the process to trying to extract Pu-239 from spent nuclear fuel. It's possible, but just not practical enough for anyone to ever bother with it for many reasons. El Grillo posted:Hey Office Thug, was going to PM you but no go. I know you wrote the OP for the Energy Tech thread, I'd like to ask you to write a Thorium LFTR OP? Yeah I might find time to do this over the weekend. The energy thread was meant to be a comparative thread presenting a lot of different ideas but I never got around to finishing the secondary energy part of the OP. I've always wanted to just write up an OP on the LFTR though. Office Thug fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Feb 21, 2012 |
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Feb 21, 2012 14:23
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The person who supposedly created the Heartland leak came forward: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/earth/activist-says-heartland-climate-papers-obtained-by-deceit.html I linked the NYT article, but Google news has all the different links. The spin is hilarious. When climate researchers got their emails hacked it was a massive blow to the credibility of climate change research even though there wasn't evidence of anything new. When a propaganda organization gets their material swiped, all of a sudden this is evidence for why climate change is a lie, and there are people just trying to cover up the truth even though the documents released show some blatant lying by Heartland.
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Feb 21, 2012 18:51
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duck monster posted:The problem is, the only real evidence pointing to its fakeness is legal threats from a panicking organization that claims its faked , but also seems to claim its stolen , and a blog with some person who seems to think pdf metadata has some sort of magical detective abilities. (Seriously, just opening a PDF on OSX lion can reset the metadata to your machine, due to apples retarded autosaving presumptuousness. It just doesn't prove a loving thing. All we know is the other documents appear to have been shat out from Adobe distiller, and this one was scanned from a physical document using an epson scanner, according to the metadata) The one I linked was the follow up, and was intended by the writer as a "one more thing" on her very thorough earlier post. However, Heartland is not claiming that it is both stolen and faked. They claim that the majority of the documents are stolen, and the strategy document is faked. They really aren't trying to have it both ways (although they are hypocritical in their attitude towards this versus Climategate) quote:I mean it seems wierd that someone would go to the effort of stealing a bunch of documents, then forge one to add in that features no new allegations about the groups activities other than them talking about stuff they do openly, which is to say coordinate funding of climate denialists. Why would someone own-goal themselves in such a way? Somebody social engineered those documents. That much is pretty much considered true across all parties - they faked being a board member, and got a (dumb) office assistant to send the documents to a new E-mail address. They got them, and tore through them - and found evidence that they considered to be damning - specifically, the contribution from Koch, the funding of a number of anti-climate change researchers, fundraising that appears to be headed towards Anthony Watts, and a plan to influence school curricula. The problem is, this is scattered throughout a large number of documents, and, read as is, doesn't strike anyone as particularly bad. There's no "gotcha" quotes. If leaked, there's a very good chance they won't get any traction in the press. So, the leaker chooses to show everybody "what the big deal is". He writes a summary document that attempts to A. sound real and B. Point out the damning things. His thought process being "even if I get found out, all I'm doing is showing them what's in the documents, and they'll still get in trouble for it!" And, well, he was sorta correct. The only reason anyone reposted was statements like "stop science teachers from teaching science" (this line is the main reason I believe it was faked, nobody would ever, EVER describe their activity like this. Perhaps "stop them from promoting things against our interests". Saying "BOO SCIENCE" is no good for anybody. quote:I'm not saying it IS real, but there isn't enough evidence to suggest it ISNT real either.
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Feb 21, 2012 20:28
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Well, with the leaker now coming forward, I think we can kick back and see what comes of it. Maybe it was forged, but even with that *slightly* better article you linked which at least attempts to put an argument behind why the memo might not be true, I still don't quite understand why someone would do it if it contains no new allegations. But maybe we'll know soon enough.
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Feb 22, 2012 04:50
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Office Thug posted:You're completely right in saying it's possible, but the amount of time and effort that would be needed to produce excess U-233 from the thorium cycle alone makes it a very bad candidate for bomb-building, not to mention U-233 doesn't behave very well in the fast neutron spectrum, and it always comes with U-232 (through parasitic side reactions when breeding, and through natural decay) which is part of a chain of very high energy gamma radiation decays. That U-232 is also waving a giant sign saying "HERE I AM!" to anything tuned to pick up high energy EM frequencies from nuclear detonations. I say impossible in the sense that it's very, very unlikely anyone would bother using the thorium cycle to make U-233 for nuclear weapons, they would almost definitely opt for breeding plutonium and enriching uranium-235 instead. True--those are the factors that make it more difficult. The fact that proliferation is possible at all, though, is what makes it unpalatable to decisionmakers. For the vast majority of applications the only words that are relevant here are "it's possible." A bomb is a bomb is a bomb.
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Feb 22, 2012 05:37
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Tomorrow's high is supposed to be drat near 50 here in Omaha, which is one of those "gently caress YOU SNOW" days where you simply do not want to step in the grass as the snowmelt turns it into the shittiest goddamn mud ever. I'm talking shoe-stealing stain-the-gently caress-out-of-everything red clay mud. In not-so-local news, Denver's high on Wednesday is expected to be 66. Mile high short sleeves.
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Feb 22, 2012 10:55
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I'd love to work on an art piece or may be a blog sometime based around the idea of progressives working against each other, called something like 'the pain of being progressive.' My latest inspiration are these two articles: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2107364,00.html http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/22/BA0R1NAEQI.DTL Essentially: Gleick should not have done what he did and he did more damage than it was worth. One of the articles even concedes the point that Heartland has been directly engaging in deceitful actions in the public sphere. I guess to simplify this would be to ask 'does two wrongs make a right?' But that is too simple. I have not one single problem with Gleick. The 'extra memo' is pretty odd but it is receiving far too much attention if it did not originate with him. He found out some info and did some more research, good for him, and directly exposed a coordinated disinformation campaign. The journalist holier than thou attitude in one of the articles really leaves me with the feeling that journalists are happy with their limp wristed reporting and taking it on the chin from their corporate money masters. This guy is awesome and deserves respect, not shunning.
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Feb 22, 2012 16:44
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Is there a site that provides a comprehensive overview over the current and planned legislation concerning carbon emissions etc. in the top 10 countries? I'm currently working on a small paper on the issue, so if there's none to be found I'd post some of it here if you are interested.
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Feb 22, 2012 16:48
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the panacea posted:Is there a site that provides a comprehensive overview over the current and planned legislation concerning carbon emissions etc. in the top 10 countries? You should be able to find all of them via Google searches. I'll do a brief recap, though. In the US, the best hope is a carbon trading scheme, which did pass the House of Representatives. This is, however, incredibly unlikely to pass the Senate, even in a second Obama term, due to the economy and concerns over re-election. You could also discuss the push to get more nuclear plants approved. In China there is none (although they don't have legislation in the traditional sense). Their position on emissions reductions with regards to any sort of UN treaty is that they want to be able to continue the unfettered increase of emissions until 2025 or 2030, after which point they will agree to a freeze of some kind. India is in general agreement with China, iirc. No clue on Brazil, probably the same as India and China. Japan tried to work out some sort of national carbon trading scheme but it was stymied. Some local governments are attempting to go solo. The EU, which encompasses most of Europe has the EU ETS, which is somewhere between "mixed results" and "failure" in terms of implementation. As far as any new progress, the danger of countries defaulting on their debt is preoccupying their time and attention for the foreseeable future. The UK has had a mixed history. I believe they technically have a carbon tax, but it was implemented many years ago. Gasoline/petrol prices are ridiculously expensive in UK, because most of what you are paying is a tax to the government. Australia just recently passed a carbon tax but it hasn't been implemented yet, so no clues yet as to its efficacy or effects.
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Feb 22, 2012 17:07
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Hey, I'm currently working on a write up for something similar, discussing new mechanisms for emissions reductions. I'd love to collaborate, though most of my stuff will be Canada-centric.
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Feb 22, 2012 18:40
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The Entire Universe posted:Tomorrow's high is supposed to be drat near 50 here in Omaha, which is one of those "gently caress YOU SNOW" days where you simply do not want to step in the grass as the snowmelt turns it into the shittiest goddamn mud ever. I'm talking shoe-stealing stain-the-gently caress-out-of-everything red clay mud. Make that celcius and it drat near feels like that in perth. Well not quite, but you get the drift.. So hot  My sleep patterns have been horrible.
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Feb 22, 2012 20:27
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