Anti-fracking funding bias at work...

"Geologists at the University of Cincinnati just wrapped up a three-year investigation of hydraulic fracturing and its impact on local water supplies. The result? There's no evidence—zero, zilch, nada—that fracking contaminates drinking water. Researchers hoped to keep these findings secret. When asked at that meeting if the university planned to publicize the results, Dr. Amy Townsend-Small, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati Department of Geology and the leader of the study, said there were no plans to do so. I am really sad to say this, but some of our funders, the groups that had given us funding in the past, were a little disappointed in our results. They feel that fracking is scary and so they were hoping this data could to a reason to ban it,” she said.

See: Why are they hiding the good news about fracking?

Fear of what - radiation or plentiful energy?

all that is real is rational

-- the old man

Why do greens still oppose nuclear power? OK, not all greens do, but nearly all green organizations do. Could there be a "sensible" (rational) reason for this?

The opposition to generation, and pushing for efficiency, stems from an acetic streak in the environmentalist movement. (i.e. "too much" consumption is a sin) So the fact that renewables can't generate power as well, and are not dependable, is actually a plus to that mindset.

-- Greg Barton

Nuclear France makes a lot of electricity

In France, 407 TWh (75%) out of the country's total production of 541 TWh of electricity was from fission-electric power stations. In 2012, it exported 45 TWh of electricity to other European countries. It's electricity price to household customers is the 7th-cheapest amongst the 28 members of the European Union, and also the 7th-cheapest to industrial consumers, with a rate of €0.14 per kWh to households and €0.07 per kWh to industrial consumers (2012). With a similar sized population, France uses a lot more electricity than UK. UK peak demand is about 55 GW. In February 2012, freezing temperatures across the vast majority of France saw the record peak of electricity consumption smashed, hitting 100.5 GW. A more normal French peak, in the absence of cold spells, was 82.5 GW on 9 December 2014.

The lessons I draw from this are:

1. The more cheap electricity we make, the more we use.
2. It's very hard to entirely decarbonize electricity. France has a lot of hydro and pumped storage too, but still has to burn some fossil.

The fact electricity consumption is so high in France might explain why so many greens are so dead against it. Apart from decarbonizing energy, the other flagship climate policy is energy efficiency - which basically means using less energy. France uses a lot of electricity. That's a "rational" reason so many greens could still be opposing nuclear power. It's their neo-Malthusian economics wot dun it - not their irrational phobia of radiation!

Why not just admit it?

One aspect of less consumption, degrowth, and doing with less, is that it's unpopular with people. Greens can't come out and say. "We want less - for everyone". It's a sure vote loser. So the public must be scared into voting for policies that give us less. Last years British election was a classic example of this. The English and Welsh Green Party actually want degrowth. The can't say that. So their 2015 manifesto actually promised growth for local economies, but admitted degrowth for the national economy. An incoherent: have your cake and eat it argument. So many green arguments are equally incoherent e.g. supporting intermittent renewables such as wind and solar despite the harm to the environment done, supporting organic farming which allows more harmful, less discriminatory pesticides, and needs more land per unit of food made. In every economic aspect, green ideas promote lower productivity, which is actually more wasteful (and less sustainable). They argue for sustainability but their policies don't actually lead there. Good evidence they don't actually want what they argue for.

But surely green fears are based on a flawed understanding of risk?

A theory goes that we form our political opinions (including pro- or anti- nuclear power, global warming, etc. according to our tribe. See David Ropeik, and cultural cognition. The problem with this notion is it overlooks the origins of environmental fears. If we examine fracking, in particular, we can see how greens manufactured an opposition against fracking by systematically lying against it. Even more damning evidence against cultural cognition is Solitaire Townsend's carbon fairly parable. If the carbon fairly could cast her spell to take away the negative effects of CO₂ (global warming), then 99% of greens would vote against her. I conclude, it was the neo-Malthusian mindset wot dun it, not the fear of CAGW.

How science broke - Greens - Final Iteration

This does not necessarily contradict anything else I wrote about them. The greens, or environmentalists have been telling us we must stop using fossil fuels for a long time. Back in the 1970s the argument was "we are running out of fossil fuel". Now the argument is: fossil fuels are catastrophically warming earth's climate, and this will kill humanity and the earth (or something like that. Woe and peril follow, anyhow), and, a secondary argument just in case the first fails!,: the pollution (CO₂!, acid gases and particulates) from burning carbon fossil kills humans and sea life. How and why did the argument switch like that. From too little fossil fuel to too much? The too little fossil fuel argument was roundly defeated by reality. The more we looked for fossil fuels the more we found, including vast fields of low quality shales and tars. When we figured out how to extract the shales and tars that really blew the old argument to pieces. Today, one no longer hears greens saying "we're running out". The global warming argument was not actually a green argument, and one suspects many greens haven't a clue how it's supposed to work. The main green arguments in support of CAGW goes "Jim Hansen said it so it must be true", "97% of scientists say it's so", or even "The IPCC said it". It's basically an appeal to authority argument. It has to be. We'll find out why later.

What went wrong

If greens didn't break science who dun it? Over the course of the 20th century, people, especially Westerners came to be inculcated with paranoia over the modern world. Paranoia over our food, medicines, toys. From sugar, fat, chemicals, and GMOs in food, through to chemicals in the environment. Modern people believe we're killing ourselves. A few of these scares are legitimate. Used in large quantities, some things are harmful: radiation, benzene, asbestos. However, I'd argue that harmful substances would've been properly regulated and replaced anyway without the green movement. Nearly all the warnings of harm come from science, often posing hypotheses : X could be killing Y. This is amplified by the media to become an incessant noise of scare and paranoia. This paranoia over the present and future comes from within society, from everyone, not just greens. Greens are just a symptom of what we become when we push the argument to it's limit. Scientists are now regarded as the most legitimate purveyors of dangers, certainly by themselves. The modern green is very different to the green of 4 decades ago. Modern greens are obsessed over personal health, and care little about saving or helping baby seals, whales, or wild birds. Make it safe become the only argument in town. Even greens no longer say "we're running out". Over time that's quite a change in the green movement: from nature-loving Malthusians to paranoid health conscious anti-vaxxers, anti-GMO, ... anti-nuclear power, anti-chemicals. The common thread in greenery is their Malthusian worldview and sustainability obsessions. Renewable energy ticks the old and new boxes. Greens can convince themselves that radiation from nuclear power is killing us but solar is a green, healthy technology. The argument against fossil fuel (it's running out, stop using it) was transformed by inventing the hypothesis of catastrophic greenhouse global warming, caused by burning fossil fuel. Here there's a grain of truth - more CO2 really does warm the climate, if only infinitesimally. By demanding the hypothesis be treated as if it were a valid theory. By demonizing as deniers anyone posing an alternative. Climate warming from burning all the fossil fuel on earth is very unlikely to cause any catastrophic global warming. That isn't the point. The point was to keep on throwing shit at us to see what sticks. They just got lucky with global warming, and found a con that scientists saw as plausible. The idea needed a grain of truth otherwise it would never have been able to con so many scientists too.

Science is broke, again

The head honcho climate scientist in Britain said, in 2007, that it must be CO2 causing global warming because "we can't think what else it might be". There two fundamentally unscientific things in what she said here.

1. There's was no significant global warming from 1999 to 2007.
2. Scientists aren't supposed to think like this: "it must be Jim wot done it because we can't figure out who else could've". They are supposed to gather data, do experiments, form hypotheses and test those hypotheses against what they found out from data. Such validated hypotheses are called theories, which could be considered scientific truth. Everything a scientist says is not scientific truth. It could just as well be junk.

It's not as if the greens broke science, nor is it the first time science broke. Modernity broke science. Or rather our obsessive fears over chemicals, radiation, GMOs, ..., our shadow. Rather than greens being the cause of, say, no-safe-dose (LNT), or the man-made global warming hoax, we, ourselves, are to blame. We broke science. We also made the greens in our image. They are just the far extreme of what's wrong with us, where our paranoias are amplified into a way of life.

Don't be silly, science is not broke!

I hear the sarky voice of a scientist at the back of my mind. Let me answer. By broke, I mean the majority of scientists believe that a hypothesis which was never validated is true. True in the sense that it has the status of law (political - not scientific law). It governs society. True in the sense that scientists treat it as if it were valid theory. The predictive power of this hypothesis is, actually, very bad. Scientists hoodwinked themselves into believing junk. Almost forgot. At least two hypotheses have this status now. Science is well broke. It changed from the child of Enlightenment, or perhaps, even the parent to the jailor. Adorno (and Nietzsche) would love the paradox.

Enlightenment reverts to mythology, which it never really knew how to elude

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• CAGW : Catastrophic Anthropic Global Warming