Saturday, January 24, 2009

450 comments

450 comments on my Oil Drum post.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

With all that dialog, did you learn anything from the anti-nukes or was it just one way communication?

Charles Barton said...

I did learn about their mentality.

Anonymous said...

Many people there are into the "save the earth for the few elite at the expense of the most of the people of the world" or maybe those who think that way are the most vocal. It seems they consider themselves part of those few elite.

I've posted there that this mentality/delusion is not new. It goes way back to the time of Plato. During Plato's time, the elite ruling class argued that the earth was overpopulated and that they must cull the common people because according to them "the people are oppressing the breast of mother earth". At that time their solution was through wars.

Today this mentality of "the majority of the people must die" is continued through such scare tactics such as "peak oil", "global warming", "the people are destroying/using up the earth's resources".

Whether these issues are real or not is not the issue for them. Their main point of view is that the majority of the earths people must die and they are in search of any catastrophe or issue to justify that position.

Anonymous said...

With all that dialog, did you learn anything from the anti-nukes or was it just one way communication?

Did you even read Barton's article, and other stuff he has written on this subject?

He has specifically addressed every argument from the anti-nuclear contingent. Ironically, Barton probably knows more about the anti-nuclear position than they do!

The TOD article wasn't anywhere near as crazy as I was expecting it to be, given how the word "nuclear" sends even the most rational 'environmentalist' into a conniption. Looking over the "dialog", I can only see a few of these knee-jerk reactionaries and their position anchored firmly in the 1970's or so and/or fear (of success, by my reading).

But I think if you read the dialog more carefully, I think most people can sense the anti-nuclear position is a losing one. The only semi-cogent argument 'against' nuclear today is wind.

But even the wind argument isn't making much sense anymore -- why spend hundreds of billions of dollars on wind farms, in what amounts to an effort to save some fuel? Carbon, whether it knows it or not, is on the way out, so saving that stuff doesn't matter (we'd do better to just crap-can it's use by going nuclear), and saving nuclear fuel is just inane given there is enough of the stuff to last forever.

But then again, here I am foaming at the mouth on a Sunday morning ... ;-/

Anonymous said...

Whether these issues are real or not is not the issue for them. Their main point of view is that the majority of the earth's people must die and they are in search of any catastrophe or issue to justify that position.

How do we send these monsters to the gallows where they belong?

Anonymous said...

George I think one way is to be much more vocal and active in educating people, i.e. educating all people on the topics like a community organization type of thing. I think if you want ot get the message about nuclear energy like LFTRs out you have to be active at all levels especially grass roots cause they directly speak to the people especially the middle class.
People who have been spreading the lies of Amory Lovins have been non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like the Council of Foriegn Relations (CFR) which was instrumental in making Lovins' ideas popular especially with President Carter in the 70's and which publish his erroneous paper in 76. Almost every position in government for the past 90 years has been filled with CFR members and hence they have tremendous influence in government policies even though they are an organization outside of government.
If you check President Obama's website whitehouse.gov and look under "Energy & the Environment" policy you will see a sentence the reads "Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source – Energy Efficiency."
That's sentence sounds exactly what Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute would say with their erroneous "negawatts" ideas.
If Lovins has that much influence with this administration, and in my opinion he does, then this country is in deep trouble.

Anonymous said...

Who'd be able to run an effective campaign against Lovins, tying him inextricably to the fossil fuel industry (which even non-environmentalists despise as profiteers)?

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