From an article by David Freeman in The Atlantic, (h/t Biggest Guy):
But beyond the headlines, Ioannidis was shocked at the range and reach of the reversals he was seeing in everyday medical research. “Randomized controlled trials,” which compare how one group responds to a treatment against how an identical group fares without the treatment, had long been considered nearly unshakable evidence, but they, too, ended up being wrong some of the time. “I realized even our gold-standard research had a lot of problems,” he says. Baffled, he started looking for the specific ways in which studies were going wrong. And before long he discovered that the range of errors being committed was astonishing: from what questions researchers posed, to how they set up the studies, to which patients they recruited for the studies, to which measurements they took, to how they analyzed the data, to how they presented their results, to how particular studies came to be published in medical journals.
This array suggested a bigger, underlying dysfunction, and Ioannidis thought he knew what it was. “The studies were biased,” he says. “Sometimes they were overtly biased. Sometimes it was difficult to see the bias, but it was there.” Researchers headed into their studies wanting certain results – and, lo and behold, they were getting them. We think of the scientific process as being objective, rigorous, and even ruthless in separating out what is true from what we merely wish to be true, but in fact it’s easy to manipulate results, even unintentionally or unconsciously. “At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,” says Ioannidis. “There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.“
Perhaps only a minority of researchers were succumbing to this bias, but their distorted findings were having an outsize effect on published research. To get funding and tenured positions, and often merely to stay afloat, researchers have to get their work published in well-regarded journals, where rejection rates can climb above 90 percent. Not surprisingly, the studies that tend to make the grade are those with eye-catching findings. But while coming up with eye-catching theories is relatively easy, getting reality to bear them out is another matter. The great majority collapse under the weight of contradictory data when studied rigorously. Imagine, though, that five different research teams test an interesting theory that’s making the rounds, and four of the groups correctly prove the idea false, while the one less cautious group incorrectly “proves” it true through some combination of error, fluke, and clever selection of data. Guess whose findings your doctor ends up reading about in the journal, and you end up hearing about on the evening news? Researchers can sometimes win attention by refuting a prominent finding, which can help to at least raise doubts about results, but in general it is far more rewarding to add a new insight or exciting-sounding twist to existing research than to retest its basic premises…after all, simply re-proving someone else’s results is unlikely to get you published, and attempting to undermine the work of respected colleagues can have ugly professional repercussions.
[Emphasis added]
Thomas Kuhn talked about this: when he talked about “normal science” and said that “”No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomenon; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all.”
A pretty good description of what Ioannidis is demonstrating about healthcare research. One wonders where else that problem might apply…
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Y’know, AL, I guess it is a heck of a lot easier to spread textbook fear, uncertainty and doubt about the scientific process than actually to _understand_ the science… or even follow through on lines of argument.
That said, let’s cut to the chase here: is every scientific study ever made unimpeachably true, accurate and unbiased? Of course not. Can significant branches of science go off on wild goose chases that take years or even decades to correct? Sure. It’s _rare_ – far rarer than your insipid “Look, if it can happen in medicine it can happen _anywhere_, including AGW!” argument would suggest – but it does happen. I dunno who’s been claiming otherwise – I know hasn’t been me.
But, see, here’s the thing, AL: when it’s discovered that studies are biased, that broad theories are incorrect and research has been headed in the wrong direction, you know who’ve been the people responsible for figuring that out?
*Scientists.*
In fact, not just scientists, but the same scientists who’re conducting research in that area, who work with the data and the logical ramifications of a given theory day in and day out, and who’re the first people to run across the fact that something’s just not working, and that base assumptions need to be rethought from scratch. (You’re fond of quoting Feynman, I suggest you go back and revisit Feynman’s own description of how this kind of thing happens: “The Seven Percent Solution” chapter from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”)
There are so many buried, asinine assumptions underlying your post above that it would take a not-so-small book to unearth and dispose of them all. But let me make a few key points and leave it at that:
You – and most of the other AGW skeptics out there on the net – fancy yourselves the _real_ rational, evidence-based thinkers in this battle, because you grab hold of some flaw – real or imagined – in climate research, loudly pronounce that this disproves everything, that climate scientists are too stupid, ignorant, or dishonest to deal with what _you_ know, and call it a day. AGW has been disproven, huzzah! (This _exact post_ being a rather good example of that. Check Jim Manzi’s work for a counter-example of how to disagree with AGW, by the way – he’s still got problems, but he’s about 1000% more intellectually honest and rigorous than you are, AL.)
_Real_ scientists, on the other hand, follow the evidence and arguments through to the end. When attacks hit their research, they issue rebuttals, carry out additional research to clarify the issue, or – _gasp_ – even recognize that the research is limited or flawed and move on. (One clear example of this being the NRC evaluation of Mann’s hockey stick work in the late 90’s – which the ultimate import of the work didn’t really change, it was recognized that the temp reconstruction prior to 1600 was not as accurate as Mann was arguing, based on the available evidence.) Climate skeptics never really reach this stage – you’ll see Watt happily trumpet some new perceived mistake in climate research, but he’ll rarely bring up the rebuttals, and certainly not with the interest and level of detail that he brought up the original attack. And because of that lack of follow-through, you guys don’t – and will never – really understand the science you’re trying to fight, let alone disprove it.
(Case in point, AL, you _could_ recognize that there’s far more research on AGW out there than you realized, and that Watt’s temp station work and the attacks on Keith Briffa’s research have both been rather thoroughly rebutted. It might not change your mind about AGW, but you’d at least be playing with a fuller deck of cards.)
There’s also the implication that AGW may or may not be true – who knows? – but how can we possibly take major action on such a sketchy understanding of what’s going on? This argument is laughable because we as a civilization _constantly_ make major bets on the basis of science that’s usually far less rigorous than the current state of AGW. NASA spends hundreds of millions to send missions out to _hopefully_ interesting locations based on what essentially amounts to a best guess. We spend billions, if not trillions, on the basis of medical theories and research that _you’ve just argued_ isn’t all that great. And our _entire economy_ is run on the basis of economic theories that would get laughed out of the room if you tried to pitch them as sound science in virtually any other field.
We move forward based on what our current science tells us because 99 times out of 100 (at least!), the current scientific understanding _is_ the right answer, or close enough as to make little difference. And we move forward because doing otherwise turns our back on the rational worldview that’s powered our civilization for the past few hundred years, and we might as well go back to subsistence farming and god-king worship without it.
That said, I await your next post on this issue – hoping against hope it consists of something other than you appropriating large chunks of somebody else’s work to make a point that doesn’t really follow from the source material. Cheers!
It is so rare to actually witness a pea shooter/thermonuclear device exchange. Keep it up.
Banning CFC’s wasn’t hard to do because the science was as good as science gets.
Not really, the first alarms came from computations that were based on reaction rates that were 1-2 orders of magnitude off. Remember the postulated role for reactions on ice crystal surfaces, etc? That’s why they were needed. And it seems that the ozone hole over the Antarctic is still not understood, the old explanation hasn’t served to explain the data. The politics was certainly similar, however.
Mind, looking at grazing infrared atmospheric absorption spectra taken from orbit was pretty impressive, the fluorine stood right out.
AL, this last comment of yours is such a non-sequitur that it’s hard to know where to begin.
First, you haven’t been _talking_ about policy choices, you’ve just been slagging climate science for nearly a year now.
You want to talk about “consensus-based energy policies that involve low-hanging fruits”… great! Where the hell are the posts over the past year from you talking about such stuff? Because, man, all I’ve been seeing is “There are only three data sets! Influence maps! Yaffa! Feynman cargo cults! Etc.”
Chuck’s comment above is definitely instructive; the science on CFCs wasn’t nearly so settled as you seem to believe, and there are still people out there who think the Montreal Protocol is a vast conspiracy to exert control over free enterprise. Action on CFCs didn’t happen because the science was perfectly clear and agreeable to all concerned, and it won’t be that way for AGW, either.
Are the “issues you’re raising” driving policy? Insofar as your beliefs are shared by the majority of conservatives in this country, sure, and insofar as the Republican political leadership is willing to go along with that if it makes their base happy, absolutely. Note, however, that the state of political action on an issue doesn’t change the underlying reality that makes that action a good or bad idea. If you need proof of this, please do ask some of your conservative pals on this site whether the passage of Obamacare somehow validates the idea of socialized medicine in their view.
And, lastly, who’s happier about the state of global energy policy this year? Well, I’d probably be a hell of a lot happier if cap-and-trade, or some variation of a carbon tax were the law of the land. That said, massive investment in renewable energy is still occurring, as is ramping-up production on various green technologies such as hybrid cars and low power electronics of various kinds, and long term research into improved solar cells and (most important) batteries is proceeding apace. Heck, even nuclear power plants are moving forward, and if they can come up with a technically and politically feasible solution to the waste problem, I say more power to them! All of those things would be significantly helped by a price signal from the government on carbon emissions, but I’ll take what I can get at the moment.
All that being the case, my question for you, AL, is what the hell else do you think there is to “negotiate”, short of full-blown cap-and-trade, and who the hell are you that anybody needs to “negotiate” anything with you?
_in general it is far more rewarding to add a new insight or exciting-sounding twist to existing research than to retest its basic premises…_
Remember that Columbus was peer-reviewed by his Portuguese colleagues, who rejected his ideas. Although they proved to be wrong, they allowed further discoveries.
IMHO at least in some areas scientific publishing has become heavily biased. Sacred cows dominate in some less-accesible corners of science, where they force quoting their jobs as a way to increase their prestige.
In the long term, I think the market judges and rules, but this fact makes many scientist to flee from the areas were direct application of their findings can happen in a matter of months.
AGW, where data was concealled, the core scientific process was reduced to a harsh correlation, the influence of market was damped by governments and a lot of money was dumped in it, probably constitutes the perfect storm.
When climate science gets that good, policy will be easy.
No it won’t.
I have no intention of getting dragged into this yes-it-is, no-it-isn’t argument, but I boldly predict that even with a consensus among the political and non-political classes, both here and abroad– a consensus that AGW is real, and to reasonable precision what the effects will be at specific point around the globe– policy will still be damned difficult.
Some areas will be hit differently than others. Some areas will be hit harder than others. Some areas, hit the same strength and the same way, will be better or worse able to adapt based on ancillary structural concerns.
What is it about this situation that says “easy” to you?
Perhaps on point, here’s a “convenient listing of Carl Sagan’s test for ‘scientific’ bunkum”:http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/015125.html .
I think the important thing to remember is that despite the heat and vitality displayed on this topic by true believers, they are relatively impotent. I guess that is why there is so much anger. At best, you could handicap a Western economy or two with carbon restrictions while the rest chug happily along, picking up whatever slack they can and profiting from it. India and China have no incentive to accept restrictions that would hurt their economy. No matter how much we love our scientists and causes in the West, they won’t hurt their population/economy until there is a clear scientific reality in front of them. India actually established its own climate-monitoring body because of disgust with the IPCC. Other developing countries are going to emit lots of carbon as they grow, and we have no authority to tell them otherwise. Changing just the US wouldn’t really stop any of these “terrible world-ending catastrophes we are all about to experience from CO2 â€, at least not without also enacting regulations in the developing economies and all of the developed ones. If you believe this is a real problem, it requires a global solution.
Realistically I doubt any country would want to seriously hurt their economy without a suicide pact with the rest of the world, so those climatology guys can keep churning out pretty slides and “peer-reviewed science.” Best of luck with that.
No, it would make carbon emissions worse by shifting industry to inefficient and polluting economies, aka China.
What is supposed to prevent this from happening? Only a mystical belief in some kind of global consciousness-shifting event.
bq. No, it would make carbon emissions worse by shifting industry to inefficient and polluting economies, aka China.
bq. What is supposed to prevent this from happening? Only a mystical belief in some kind of global consciousness-shifting event.
Or perhaps it’s just a slightly more sophisticated view of how the world works, Glen. Whatever else their faults, China and India’s leadership both seem at least somewhat aware of the threat of global warming – they both have significant populations of extremely poor people at sea level who’ll literally get swamped if the worst happens. Note that at the same time they’re ramping up auto usage and building new coal plants, they’re also building substantial solar and wind arrays.
Because, yes, they’re building brand new, energy guzzling infrastructure as we speak – but the _nature_ of that infrastructure is _also_ being determined as we speak. And the sooner the US takes the lead in developing and deploying low-carbon, renewable technology (that kind of revolutionary R&D being one of our great strengths as a country), the sooner we can sell that tech to China, India, and the rest of the developing world, improving both our economy and doing a whole lot to cut carbon emissions at home and abroad, even as living standards rise up.
There’s also the not-insignificant problem of peak oil, and the problem that trying to move China and India to a car-centric, US-like infrastructure is not only impossible due to supplies, but would probably send the price of oil high enough to significantly mess up our own economy. ($10 a gallon, anyone?) That being the case, developing stuff like electric vehicles powered by solar cells on the roof of your own home isn’t just a green fantasy, it’s damn near mandatory if we want our kids to enjoy anything life the standard of living we currently have.
Ha. Yeah, like I said.
Huh… I guess in Glen’s world, opening up new and developing markets to new technologies is a hippie treehugger fantasy, rather than a core component of global capitalism.
Or perhaps it’s only a fantasy because it involves green technology? Tell me, Glen, in your world, does money change its function, or somehow stop becoming money, because we’re dealing with solar cells and wind turbines rather than, say, cell towers and bulldozers?
Or perhaps in Glen’s world, living standards can only go up because of the presence of carbon emissions – these Indian villages that have no electricity, perhaps it’s only an illusion that their standard of living actually increases when they get a communal net-connected computer powered by a solar panel? Or perhaps it’s not somehow the case that the deployment of additional solar cells is far cheaper and easier than hooking said villages up to a non-existent grid that has to be connected to a new coal plant somewhere.
What else it like on your world, Glen? Did the “domino effect” actually work out in the Middle East like you wanted? Did a _real_ conservative get elected in ’08, and somehow stop the global financial meltdown? What other wisdom and enlightenment do you have to bring us from that shinier, happier place?
Correct me if Im wrong, but doesn’t China’s energy consumption surpass ours? And isn’t the majority of the energy from dirty coal? Weren’t some miners just killed there? And the search continues for a few more. Pardon my skepticism on China being a vanguard in renewable energy. At least at this point in time, I think China and the U.S. are equal “offenders.” I cannot speak to India, but the solar computers seems very clever and undoubtedly energy is supposed to above all, supply citizens first and foremost, from whatever source.,
Separately, I would like the official determination on whether I am allowed to post here without being called trash? A simple yes or no from the site’s decision makers will suffice. If it is a no, as was vehemently lobbied for by TOC3, your will will be done.
Citing differences of opinion, TOC3 and I had it out a few weeks back, I believe over something about soldiers, he thought I was impersonating one, but I assure you, I was one I have the DD-214 to prove it. Its already forgotten for my part, but he had said he didn’t want to post here until I was removed. I believe he has been posting, and I have not, but I think there is some very valuable insights here, and I would like to be able to drop by occasionally, if it is all good.
Chris,
Leaving aside the scientific case for the moment…
Even assuming Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton reanimated themselves and presented clear and convincing proof that global warming will occur and that it’s caused by CO2 emissions, there are still a whole host of subsequent follow-on issues.
First, what’s the damage? Okay, sea level rise, how much, and what does that actually mean in economic terms?
More importantly, what do these numbers look like under different emissions scenarios? (This might be the “are we screwed already?” question.) If we enact cap and trade, and the estimate is that the seas will rise two feet without it and one foot eleven inches with it…
What mitigation is possible? “Bangladesh Sinks” isn’t inevitable; we have at least one advanced country that’s mostly under sea level, after all.
How does the comparison of damage caused by global warming stack up when compared to the costs of various forms of mitigation? If global warming will cost us a trillion dollars over the next century, but stopping it causes us to forego ten trillion in productive activity…
What about foreign policy? Yes, China and India have coastal regions that are vulnerable to flooding; they also have populations of subsistence farmers _in excess of our population, each_. Failing to spread industrialization to those populations would be… well, how bad, exactly? Is it worth saving a million people from coastal flooding if fifty million people starve? Or are the numbers really the other way around?
What technologies can help? What technologies are “promising and under research”? What technologies are ready for deployment? What technologies have been around for fifty years and might have prevented this problem except for idiot Greens? (Sorry, leading question there…) Basically, what can science do to change the scenarios above for the better?
We probably can’t answer all of these questions with the current state of climate science – even if we accept that the climate models are correct and accurate, we just plain don’t know how to model the shifts in local climate that will affect various areas. But if we can’t answer the questions, we probably won’t ever get anything done on the topic.
Avatar, you’re right, those are totally reasonable and important questions to ask. I suspect you and I would disagree on what the answers to some of those questions would be, or even how many of them have already been answered. (The 4th Assesment Report of the IPCC does talk about a lot of this stuff in detail, and just about all of these issues are have at least partial estimates based on ongoing research.)
And these questions are exactly what was discussed this summer when the cap-and-trade bill was being debated in Congress, and, for good or ill, the current (fairly conservative) estimates of those answers are the reason the legislation went from something that was moderately robust and menaingful to something that was actually pretty damn weak.
So yes, AGW proponents and skeptics alike are aware of these questions, and dealing with them is exactly what the political debate _should_ be about.
But it’s _not_ about these kind of questions for the vast majority of conservatives. It’s not what AL talks about when he talks about AGW on this site; it’s not what guys like John McCain are willing to talk about in public anymore (although it was different two years ago) and when Jim Manzi had the gall to suggest that Mark Levin was being dishonest and that these are the questions conservatives should be debating instead, he damn near got lynched on NRO for his troubles.
So, ultimately, my reply to you is the same as my reply to AL, Avatar: you want to have a conversation about the wisdom of various courses of action on AGW, fine, let’s get to it. But if you want to get behind a bunch of laughably-easy-to-debunk lies about the current state of climate science… well, I guess I’ll just have to debunk those lies, and have a good laugh about it.
Well, don’t get me wrong. The fact that I’m willing to list issues that follow agreement on the science, doesn’t mean that I’ve conceded that the science is (a) sound and (b) sufficiently advanced to have enough predictive value to use as guidance.
I don’t accuse the various researchers and scientists of bad faith. They’ve got a dog’s dinner in front of them – a truly complicated problem, inadequate knowledge of the physical processes involved, nowhere near enough computer power to fully model the problem.
AL’s point, and this is one that you’ve studiously ignored, is simple – we have one technology that could provide us with a significant percentage of our national energy needs, one that emits no greenhouse gases. That’s nuclear power. We don’t need more research, we don’t need more studies, we don’t need pilot projects; we just need to DO it. A project to create several new nuclear reactors would save quite a bit more in the way of emissions than any cap-and-trade system that we’re realistically prepared to implement; it would also have the added advantage of helping us move away from fossil fuels AND from resources in Islamic countries that don’t much like us.
We did not do that, we are not doing it now, and we are unlikely to do it in the future – precisely because of the opposition of the environmental movement, most of whom are up to their eyeballs in the global warming mess too.
Important, is it? A looming catastrophe, is it? Enough that it’s necessary to place the entire industry of the world subject to a central planning board, who will rule on what is and is not to be allowed to be done not on the basis of whether it is needed or useful now, but on the basis of whether the exhaust fits in this year’s budget?
If we’re going to go that far… if we’re even contemplating going that far, is it too much to ask that people sit down and ask themselves, “Hey, maybe we could have some nuclear plants? We’d get no CO2 and plenty of electricity? Even the French can run them without disasters, so we can probably manage it, right?”
But by and large, we don’t have that. Instead we have planned reactors not opening because it will cost more to litigate with the BANANAs than it will to actually build the darned things. And that’s a measure of seriousness, isn’t it? If it’s a gosh-darned emergency, let’s treat it like one; if we have the luxury to be squeamish about our methods, obviously it’s not actually an emergency at all.
“Backhanding”, AL? You link to two posts that don’t actually _talk_ about finding “low impact solutions” so much as they just castigate “warmists” for not talking to _you_ about low impact solutions. Which is to say, it’s basically just a variation on your same-old, same-old “why don’t liberals actually listen to me if they want to win” whine.
That’s “backhanding” in the same way that your repeated insistence that “there’s only three data sets” makes it so – that is to say, not at all, except in your own mind.
And, Avatar? AL’s point was not that we should be building nuclear power plants – he hasn’t mentioned nuclear _once_ in any of these posts. Hell, _I’ve_ talked more approvingly about nuclear (see comment #5 above) more than he has. You’re entirely reading your own biases into his position. Between that and the “central planning board” stuff, I think I’ll let you tilt at your own windmills in peace, thanks.
_That’s nuclear power. We don’t need more research, we don’t need more studies, we don’t need pilot projects; we just need to DO it._
My question has always been: what do we do with the waste. Nuclear power is cheap, but only because no one bothers to pay for the cleanup. And cleanup can be a serious problem (see “Hanford”:http://www.doh.wa.gov/hanford/publications/overview/overview.html )
At this point, nuclear scares me alot more than AGW. It has the potential to go bad very quickly, even with a small storage leak. When there’s a plan to deal with the waste effectively (and costs are factored into processing costs), I’ll be much more comfortable with it.
Alchemist, that problem is already solved. The amount of waste is not vast, especially compared to coal mine tailings and the like, and the Yucca Mountain site has been studied to within an inch of its life; it’s perfectly safe to put the waste in there, and that’s the end of it.
Nuclear waste isn’t a problem on the same scale as AGW, or even on anything like the same scale. It’s an engineering problem, essentially, and not a really difficult one at that – “fuse it into glass blocks, seal them in lead, ship them to a deep hole, put them in the hole” is not a strategy that requires radically new technologies or hundreds of billions of dollars (maybe a billion or two?)
On top of that, while a nuclear accident could be very bad for a handful of people at the plant itself, there’s no reason to fear Chernobyl-style environmental catastrophe from modern plant designs. Even under the worst-case scenarios, they don’t melt down.
Chris – “So, ultimately, my reply to you is the same as my reply to AL, Avatar: you want to have a conversation about the wisdom of various courses of action on AGW, fine, let’s get to it.”
Ten days ago I posted a suggestion on another thread that saving the rain forests and increasing planetary photosynthesis could be a way to reduce CO2 levels. I would be interested to know what you think of this.
Avatar: “On top of that, while a nuclear accident could be very bad for a handful of people at the plant itself, there’s no reason to fear Chernobyl-style environmental catastrophe from modern plant designs. Even under the worst-case scenarios, they don’t melt down.”
Nuclear power plants in the United States are certainly better managed now than they were in the 1970s, but I would think that human error is still possible. Have plants been redesigned to make a core meltdown now a technical impossibility?
The problem with nuclear energy that would most worry me is the weapons proliferation threat. I don’t see a safe way forward with fission energy unless we can revive the Baruch Plan of 1946 or something that would place control of nuclear technology under effective international control.
David Billington:
Plants have absolutely been redesigned. While they were under the thumb of the Atomic Energy Commission, nuclear plants completely missed out on the Ergonomics revolution that made other industries vastly safer. During this time there were two partial melt-downs, the worst of which permanently closed Three Mile Island. Since deregulation there have been no meltdowns and a steady decline in safety problems.
However, during this same period an estimated 11,000,000 idiots have watched The China Syndrome on cable TV, which renders the whole discussion moot.
Meanwhile, China will increase its nuclear capacity tenfold by 2050, so we’d better hurry up and sell them that magic green technology that runs on unicorn farts.
Glen, I’m not aware that we have automated reactor operation enough to eliminate human operator error, although I agree that the likelihood of failure has been greatly reduced.
bq. Ten days ago I posted a suggestion on another thread that saving the rain forests and increasing planetary photosynthesis could be a way to reduce CO2 levels. I would be interested to know what you think of this.
David, I’m all for saving the rain forests, but that’s not actually going to reduce carbon levels all that much. Keep in mind that atmospheric carbon levels have been rising since the ’50s, when the rain forests were in better shape than they are now, so even at full strength, or nearly so, they weren’t enough to counteract all the carbon we were producing.
Nuclear energy is the only real grown up way to significantly reduce carbon emissions. Any international deals or other nonsense will be ignored and cheated on just as thoroughly as Kyoto has proven to be. All the other schemes are grabs at central planning, which just by rare coincidence is the answer the people in question have for every question nobody is asking. And I’ll repeat the admonition that bears repeating- I’ll take the dangers of AGW seriously when the people pushing it start living like they believe it. If George Soros starts buying up beach front property in Philadelphia on the cheap, I’ll know we have a serious problem. Let alone Nancy Pelosi stops chartering military jets to cart her around.
Snark aside, either nuclear fears are overblown or AGW fears have been oversold, because if Chernobyl is the sum of all fears it in fact paled in comparison to the doomsday predictions we’re being fed about warming, so whats the problem?
Finally, we have made a political decision not to reprocess nuclear waste like France does, which would greater reduce the waste we have to deal with (one way or another). The logic is that if we dont reprocess, other nations won’t develop nuclear weapons. As that boat has long since sailed, its far past time that we got caught up in with reprocessing, given the amount of waste we’ve already accumulated if nothing else. Its silly pie in the skyism to believe our stance on the issue is influencing other nations even a tiny bit.
Chris: “David, I’m all for saving the rain forests, but that’s not actually going to reduce carbon levels all that much. Keep in mind that atmospheric carbon levels have been rising since the ’50s, when the rain forests were in better shape than they are now, so even at full strength, or nearly so, they weren’t enough to counteract all the carbon we were producing.”
I meant to suggest saving the rain forest as part of a planetary effort to absorb the excess CO2 level today, not just return to an earlier level. The question I can’t answer is whether this might be done by increasing the tree cover or transferring carbon to the soil via plants. In other words, could better land management affect the situation?