h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"National Geographical has several videos "

Yeah, they do. Like the one where they say there "might" be still-living examples of the long-thought-to-be-extinct enormoshark, Megalodon, based on reports of overturned boats.

National Geographic, as an "apparent neutral source", has for me at least all the credibility of the Weekly World News or the Sunday Sport. Fail.

I just don't have the information to form a firm opinion on Fracking.... I've watched a documentary that was firmly on the fence, in which many of the ills would be more appropriately attributed to the legal/regulatory system that surrounded it, rather than the technology itself.

My instinct is that I don't like the sound of it, but I also don't like the sound of not being able to keep the lights on, so to speak. My other instinct is that we probably just don't know much about Fracking yet - it's a fairly new technology and we don't (and can't) know what the long term consequences are.

So rather than either of the usual knee jerk reactions ("I'm in favour because it allows me to keep my head in the sand about environmental sustainability" / "it just sounds bad"), I'm just going to say.... I don't know.

There are good reasons for thinking it might be dangerous (and not acknowledging valid objections and genuine concerns is "fail" as I imagine the young people say), but equally on some interpretations the precautionary principle means we shouldn't do anything new ever.

Either way, I reckon that if we have to do it, then we need to step up renewables research (especially around power transfer and storage). If fracking turns out to be the only way to buy ourselves some time, we better not waste it.

>> Here the govt. is making imposible to use solar panels in private houses and buildings. In UK, I´ve read today in a Guardian article something similar about eolic energy. <<

I think the UK government gave people tax breaks for investing in local / community renewables (turbines etc) but it was brief and they stopped it because the EU said it was against competition rules. Complete madness ... yet the Frackers are given tax breaks & have the size & resources to dodge taxes through channelling moneys to subsidiaries and parts of the company in low tax regions of the world.

>>I think the UK government gave people tax breaks for investing in local / community renewables (turbines etc) but it was brief and they stopped it because the EU said it was against competition rules. Complete madness ... yet the Frackers are given tax breaks & have the size & resources to dodge taxes through channelling moneys to subsidiaries and parts of the company in low tax regions of the world.

I've read some interesting arguments that stated that the UK tax breaks/subsidies for installing domestic solar panels were very seriously excessive. I looked into getting some myself, and it was a case of 'if it looks too good to be true, it probably is". Though in this case, it wasn't - at least for those who got in quick. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better investment at the time if you were prepared to have an ugly roof. While there were a few companies which offered joint-ownership to people who didn't have the cash to buy it outright, they were still homeowners. And where did the money from the subsidy/tax breaks/guaranteed inflated prices come from?

Everyone else's energy bills. Net result - some eyewateringly expensive electricity being produced, everyone paying for it, a few already wealthy people profiting from it.

Can't separate social justice from environmental justice...

Fail?


If you wanted to have a look at the world that exist out of your egg-shell, you´d have already read some reports on fracking like the Tyndall report, and many more written by specialists on the issue, all over the world.

Something else you could read, that day you decide to abandon solipsism:

On energy: climate change and the lobbies against the renewable sources of energy.

On religion:

the Liberation Theology movement, the activities of Quakers in prisons, the curas obreros during the Spanish Civil War...

..........

On the other hand, being an atheist means nothing, it´s not a kind of essential characteristic of a person, so don´t think that atheists are free from committing crimes or saying huge stupidities as Mr Dawkins has done recently about Muslims and Nobel prizes.

http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2135513/exclusive-barker-warns-feed-tariff-scheme-red

The subsidies available for wind turbines are/were astonishing too. And the people with large areas of land lying being hitherto unproductive were quite wealthy enough before they got paid large sums of money to host these things. And of course the money got passed onto consumers which played a part in electricity prices rising 40% in 5 years. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10122850/True-cost-of-Britains-wind-farm-industry-revealed.html

Thanks for the additional information - I hadn't realised how the subsidies had been set up.

Universities are examples of movements that have survived for a very long time without becoming (too) inward looking and divisive. I admit that academic internal politics can be mind-numbingly petty and there are few people as grumpy as a lecturer whose privileges are about to be reset to be the same as normal people.

However, lots of these organisations have managed to steer a course over the last millennia through all sorts of rocky roads, they have continued to grow and have not fallen apart. However they are growth oriented organisations involved in expanding the minds of the young and our culture's boundaries of knowledge.

I can't see atheism managing the same thing. You can define it as the non-belief in God which privileges God: thereby rather undermining the point. Or you can define it as the belief in nothing-in-particular which isn't much of a rallying cry for the long term: a fixed, non-developing, very obvious truth is tricky to maintain fervour over. What can you discuss at meetings other than the downfall of your enemies? This is a particularly unfortunate mindset as I suspect it can lead to growing the lists of enemies just to preserve the cause's momentum.

Who knows? The local humanism society advertises that it meets at a nearby cafe but I have never seen anybody there at its Sunday morning meetings. The only people I know who have gone are church-goers trying to expand their understanding what it means to be a person in this crazy world. They failed to meet anybody but the coffee appears to be of a consistent and good standard.

"What can you discuss at meetings other than the downfall of your enemies? "

This.

And @Maria: "Fail". Yes. You cited a source, and I pointed out that despite what its reputation might once have been, that source is demonstrably less reliable than a supermarket tabloid. That's not an opinion from inside an eggshell, that's an objectively verifiable fact. But if you prefer, stick your fingers in your ears and believe your own narrative. Don't let facts get in the way.

Peter Schickele once said jokingly, "Truth is just truth. You can't have opinions about truth."

Scientists disagree about their findings all the time. It's their job to do so, not because they hate each other or are so incompetent that they need help in making even simple deductions, but because the objective is to keep getting closer to the truth about things.

Such are the limitations of the human condition that I consider it likely that 500 years from now, most of the things we now consider true will be laughed at by the people who are alive then. As a wise philosopher-cartoonist said, "Don't take life too serious. It ain't nohow permanent." [The same person also said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."]

Whatever

"the objective is to keep getting closer to the truth about things"

True.

And broadcasting a programme in which it's insinuated that a long-extinct creature may be still living and turning over boats is not getting closer to the truth. It is, in short, bullshit.

And if you broadcast bullshit, well, you're reputation as a reliable broadcaster of science can't help but suffer.

>> And if you broadcast bullshit, well, you're reputation as a reliable broadcaster of science can't help but suffer. <<

Peer reviewed scientific journals from time to time contain bullshit articles. Ultimately each article & broadcast needs to be judged on its own merit but yes of course overall reputation depends on frequency of bullshit and the depth of bullshit to be found in any individual article / broadcast. Also standards can change dependent on who is at the helm of the journal / broadcaster at any given time.

"you're reputation as a reliable broadcaster"

Somebody shoot me.

Too late know. You should of been shot long ago

"And if you broadcast bullshit, well, you're reputation as a reliable broadcaster of science can't help but suffer."


and if you don´t check what you say but let your arrogance speak for you....

look here, ( aint internet great?)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130807-discovery-megalodon-shark-week-great-white-sharks-animals/

It was Discovery Channel, not National Geographic who screened that documentary.

In the comments, some even critizise NG for not taking in consideration the scientific question that the doc was speculating about.

Disclaimer were added at the end of the video.

ahem...

( btw, I´ll remind you that you bet folded money in the other thread about the existence of principles, values... in the IOC... I posted about it, go and check, darling)

Let´s look at US, where fracking started time ago:

Internal EPA report highlights disputes over fracking and well water

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa-dimock-20130728,0,4847442.story

The presentation, based on data collected over 4 1/2 years at 11 wells around Dimock, concluded that "methane and other gases released during drilling (including air from the drilling) apparently cause significant damage to the water quality." The presentation also concluded that "methane is at significantly higher concentrations in the aquifers after gas drilling and perhaps as a result of fracking [hydraulic fracturing] and other gas well work."

Also, that snake oil of fracking is treated by Raymond Pierrehumbert, Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, he has written an article for Slate on the topic:


http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/02/u_s_shale_oil_are_we_headed_to_a_new_era_of_oil_abundance.single.html




a rethorical question on solar energy: why with the new law of energy in Spain, individual citizens or small communities will have to pay a fine if they use solar panels, that is, if they seek energy by themselves in a clean a cheap way?

And why in Germany, where the feed-in tariff was born, the production of solar energy is satisfactory for all? Why Germany produces more solar energy than Spain?

About the subsides on eolic energy to rich landowners, it says it all. Why not subsidize particular or small communities instead?

qué surprise!
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/newsdesk/energy/news/who-are

A Lords committee that is calling for fracking to be made an urgent national priority includes at least five members with interests in the global industry - according to an Energydesk analysis of parliamentary registers.