Bet that got your attention. We noted a few months ago that global warming denial has been doing a fade from the media, with only some Fox News personalities holding down the fort on a regular basis. Now, we're not neutral on this subject ourselves and think the issue's extension in the world of punditry has proven to be an extension of other arguments not really related to climate change per se - the know-nothing assault on science, a feint to industries that are rapidly finding their own ways forward, perhaps a way to keep an ideological wedge issue alive for political advantage - but whatever it may be or may have been, the embers of argument seem to be flickering out one at a time. How else to explain Fox's Shepherd Smith, in recounting the tale of a man who fell down the hole of a port-a-potty, saying - well, see for yourself.
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
Comments
"Why suppress Global Warming Denial? Because there is this enormous consensus that Global Warming is TRUE, and anyone who is a Global Warming Denier is either an idiot or in the pay of oil companies and probably ought to be jailed; just as there is this enormous consensus that Intelligent Design is TRIVIALLY FALSE, and anyone who believes in it is either an idiot or in the pay of some sinister forces and probably ought to be jailed. The principle that anything against the consensus must be excluded from every classroom in the land is so important that central control of curricula must trump local control."
Read on:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2008/Q2/mail522.html#ID
True, global warming propaganda does lend support to using new nukes, but it's intellectually dishonest to assume that global warming from green house gas emissions is happening now when Earth was much warmer at the start of the Middle Ages and Greenland was green, all without man-made global warming.
I expect better from you, Mark Flanagan. Perhaps I should not have. Sickeningly liberal to the core. Don't like Fox News, the only alternative to the manure from CNN and the rest, then don't watch it.
Even if you think global warming is complete hooey, as I assume you do, you have to admit that global warming denial has become pretty much what I suggested - an outlying opinion that has lost its relevance except as a stalking horse for other issues.
I think all of us have opinions that have been burned out of the discourse but remain convinced we are completely right - and sometimes even get vindicated over time. Remember "the next ice age" from the seventies? I do, and a lot of people went for it (I was too young, though it did capture my imagination; but I worried more about aliens shrinking the earth like I saw in Superman comics.)
I think there is little question that global warming has a human-generated component that can be reversed. You don't agree. One of us is "wrong." My interest here, though is not just promoting my opinion over yours (git yer own blog, fellar!), but in seeing how the media works the issue. I'm okay with it - it must make you want to throw things.
But by all means, when we disagree, have at it here in the comments. Put links up like you did and do your level best to prove your point. As with so many issues, the fun is in the debate and being made to think outside our comfort zones - it's not like Brainiac is going to shrink the Earth to prove one of us wrong.
And hey!, if you see me as sickeningly liberal, how could you ever expect better of me? Doesn't compute.
Talk about ships appearing to sink as they recede does not amount to suppression of flat-Earthism, it amounts to refutation thereof. I thing global warming deniers are being similarly refuted but not suppressed. If you say, "The earth is obviously flat" and I don't even respond, even then I'm still not suppressing you.