SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the dirty,-expensive,-obsolete-technology dept.
Common Dreams reports
FirstEnergy Solutions (FES)--together with its subsidiaries FirstEnergy Generation and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company--announced its bankruptcy [April 1] after years of short-sighted business decisions and executive mismanagement that resisted investing in clean, renewable energy, and its workers. The company now has a serious obligation to protect its workers and their benefits from the bankruptcy process, as well as meet its environmental responsibilities--particularly if its coal and nuclear power plants are retired or sold.
FES has power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.
In response, Mary Anne Hitt, Director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, released the following statement:
"FirstEnergy Solutions' bankruptcy is a cautionary tale for utilities, investors, and public officials who think the coal and nuclear industries will somehow rebound in the coming years. They will not. America's 21st century energy market demands cheap, flexible energy resources that can rapidly shift with electricity demands and don't pollute local air and water. Coal and nuclear plants are too expensive and too dirty to compete in the modern market.
"FirstEnergy Solutions is in bankruptcy because it continually ignored America's shift to clean energy by investing in uneconomic coal and nuclear plants which have been losing money for years. Now it's time for the company to accept its mistakes and concentrate on protecting its workers and their benefits during the bankruptcy process, while also meeting its environmental obligations--particularly if its plants are decommissioned or sold. FES must do everything it can to help those being harmed by its negligent business practices and focus on transitioning them to new economic opportunities."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by milsorgen on Wednesday April 04 2018, @04:39AM (33 children)
The Sierra Club is right up there with SPLC in regards to the size of the grain of salt I must take before imbibing their statements.
On the Oregon Coast, born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:09AM (24 children)
So, take your pinch of salt and enlighten us with your wisdom.
Do you think that coal has a future other than bankruptcy?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @06:28AM (23 children)
Coal has no future. But nuclear is still badly needed if you want to decarbonize the entire power grid. If you are happy burning methane releasing trillions of tons of CO2 per year, then sure, nuclear has no future. But if you want to close those down, nuclear is badly needed since blackouts are unacceptable in today's world.
As a grain of salt, fossil fuel usage in China expanded last year even when they installed more renewables most of the rest of the world combined. So thinking that renewables are "magic" like Mary Anne Hitt and "things will work out" is shortsighted at best. Decarbonizing the economy is a BIG problems and we don't need idiots blocking it by protesting clean solutions like nuclear power.
Since Kyoto was signed, fossil fuel usage (and hence carbon emissions) went up by 50%. That's +50%, despite all the progress on renewable front, it's not even satisfying energy growth, never mind replacing fossil fuels. Coal and nuclear are hurt by FRAKING gas sources, not by renewables. But that doesn't really help with the global warming problem, does it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday April 04 2018, @06:50AM (2 children)
Not a kind nuclear power that lets radioactive gunk for long times.
"Burn" the shit out of the nuke fuel the best you can before declaring it as "waste".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:12AM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power [wikipedia.org]
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP0708/08rp11 [aph.gov.au]
Alas, the powers-that-be don't like it *because* the by-products are not weapons.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday April 04 2018, @06:31PM
Well, fusion power is only about 15-20* years away at this point, at which point the nuclear problems will be solved.
*Of course, this has been the case for at least 20 years.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:26AM (19 children)
Still the most expensive way ever devised to produce electricity.
...and as c0lo notes, when they start building plants that CONSUME the crap that has been produced since 1943, and which has been lying around for decades within a quarter mile of where it was produced, that will be a start.
...and the irresponsibility of that industry has demonstrated that those for-profit operations that want to build/operate those plants (haven't seen any for decades here) pony up the insurance premiums for those as well.
(Good luck getting an underwriter without a gov't waiver.)
Meanwhile, 15 petawatts of solar energy is bathing the Earth continuously.
Collecting solar energy so that it can be used to run stuff produces zero waste products.
How many more Fukushimas do we need before we figure out what a lousy notion nukes are?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @01:03PM
Probably a lot more than one every two decades.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday April 04 2018, @01:23PM (17 children)
Meanwhile, 15 petawatts of solar energy is bathing the Earth continuously.
That may be true, but as the earth rotates once every ~24 hours (and ignoring axial tilt), it means that on average, people experience roughly half the time in darkness, when solar cells don't produce a great deal of output. Grid-scale storage of electrical power is not available yet. Land is not distributed smoothly around the globe, either, so good luck with harnessing that 15 petawatts when the Pacific Ocean is facing the sun. Floating solar arrays have a few issues.
The thing about nuclear power is that it is the only way of getting continuous base-load power without carbon-dioxide emissions. Biofuels (which do produce no net emissions) don't meet the demand.
As for nuclear 'waste', people would be far better off dealing with non-proliferation issues and finding a way to run fast breeder reactors. Instead of the needlessly wasteful once-through uranium cycle used now, the unused uranium isotopes could be used to generate more fuel, and the high fast-neutron flux reactors used to 'burn up' the high-level waste. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese eventually do it anyway, NPT or no NPT.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:12PM (16 children)
Every house already contains a heat battery (ie. a hot water system) that is already used to help match demand with production. Elon Musk has already built a large scale solar battery here in Australia so it's already a solved problem, but hydroelectric is the cheapest storage there is... even in a place as flat and dry as Australia we've got almost 4 gigawatts of capacity in the Snowwy Mountains Scheme [wikipedia.org], 2GW in Tasmania (soon to double), and capacity being designed into most municipal water supplies. We've even got a dinky little 570 megawatt pumped storage project here in Brisbane.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:48PM (11 children)
To be replaced with a new problem - the cost of the solution. There's also a limited amount of hydro power out there. And Australia has a relatively high level of hydroelectric per capita. That's not going to work as well with most of Asia which has a much higher population density (and power generation that increased by almost a factor of five [enerdata.net] between 1990 and 2016.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Wednesday April 04 2018, @03:56PM (10 children)
China can't deal with the polution it already has. It's a problem which must be solved, so it will be. Political will is a magnificent thing. Cost certainly isn't a problem, especially if they want to transition to an economy driven more by local demand - infrastructure is good for that. Coal exporting countries will be able to afford fewer Chinese good though of course.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:01PM (9 children)
But it could deal with it if it had scrubbers on its coal plants and a variety of other environmental measures.
Global trade didn't happen because local was better.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday April 04 2018, @11:39PM (8 children)
It wasn't for China, but then it was. It was for the US, but then it wasn't.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:34AM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday April 05 2018, @07:15AM (6 children)
Sorry to break it to you [tradingeconomics.com]...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @11:50AM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday April 05 2018, @12:25PM (4 children)
Bretton Woods failed in the 1970's, and the US has been running a trade deficit ever since, made up for by financialisation/Wallstreet. Unfortunately China isn't an economic client of the US, so the trade balance isn't being made up for any longer because China Inc. isn't run from Wallstreet - 2008 was a side effect of that in large part. The US MUST fight a war with China/Russia, or permanently become #2 or #3 (after China and the EU). Unfortuately for the US it's most probably already too late for that, and unfortunately for the US populace the leadership class doesn't want to accept that fact.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @01:39PM (3 children)
And that's bad for the US how? You state here that the US is buying a lot of foreign goods with financial assets rather than physical assets. And keep in mind that due to intentional inflation on the part of the Chinese, the part that goes to China gets devalued more over time than if it had stayed in the US.
Why again MUST the US fight anyone? And even if we take your statement at face value, we still have the problem that the US MUST win said war. As Sun Tzu wrote:
Moving on:
Not at all. Just have better legal infrastructure, freedom, and a cheaper business-creation and expansion environment. The US still has a significant fraction of the population of China and that proportion will grow in the US's advantage over the next century.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday April 05 2018, @07:17PM (2 children)
Making up for a trade deficit with financialisation/Wallstreet would be great if it still worked, but that system finally failed in 2008. Obama bailed the banks out not only on the backs of taxpayers, but also wheeled out the currency printing presses - that way a continuing failure can look like a success because the billionaires can look at those figures popping and feel they aren't losing wealth, and the real economy still maintains enough liquidity to function. In a functioning economy printing money would lead to inflation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @07:48PM (1 child)
What's not working about it presently? We still have financial asset creation (for recent examples, high tech companies and Bitcoin) and we still have elevated inflation in China.
There are two effects that are happening here which are anti-inflationary. First, the assets (like untradable junk bonds) for which money was printed are extremely low velocity - inflation is also proportional to velocity of money. Second, the closely related primary purpose of such purchases has been to stabilize banks. So we're speaking of purchasing overleveraged loans which don't have sufficient backing reserves. Printing money in such circumstances results in greatly reduced money in actual circulation while reducing short term costs of bank failures.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday April 05 2018, @09:07PM
What's not working? The banks are larger and more highly leveraged for one, and also China isn't working as hard to stabilise the US anymore, so Chinese Wallstreet and property investment is dropping as it successfully grows its domestic economy. That's not to say another US crash wouldn't be a disaster for China, but they're increasingly untied because anyone with eyes can see the US is high risk (to put it kindly).
And regarding printing money and inflation... that's exactly what I'm talking about. The US economy is losing its heartbeat, so the doctors are putting in transfusions of cash to keep the patient alive which unfortunately doesn't modify the long term prognosis.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 04 2018, @08:34PM (3 children)
> Every house already contains a heat battery (ie. a hot water system) that is already used to help match demand with production.
Nope. Just-in-time is a lot more efficient.
/nitpick
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday April 04 2018, @11:04PM (2 children)
...but the reason every house (at least in Australia) has a hot water system is because you can't just turn coal plants on and off, so there's an offpeak tariff structure to encourage hot water system use in an attempt to modify demand somewhat. Perhaps if a significant portion of your generating infrastructure was using fracked gas which I understand can be stepped up and down much more easily, but haven't they decided that's even worse than coal now? In the case of solar it would of course be most efficient to put the heat battery on the roof and charging directly from the sun (ie. solar hot water).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 04 2018, @11:26PM (1 child)
Given the average hair length in my house, heating the water just as you need it is not only massively more efficient (I know, from getting rid of a tank that was double-wrapped in insulation, yet still cutting the gas bill in half), but a guarantee that I will still be able to take a warm shower.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday April 04 2018, @11:47PM
There are offpeak tariffs on gas? I know electrical power in Australia used to cost next to nothing if it was drawn from the offpeak circuit, though its not as cheap these days due to solar taking over peak demand and reducing surplus generation.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:45AM (7 children)
I should add that I think that the Sierra Club's environmental credentials are not 100% positive.
They want to take down the Hetch Hetchy dam, which provides water and clean electricity to the Bay Area. I am sure that the valley was beautiful before the dam was built, but taking it down is short-term thinking when compared to the clean electricity produced by the dam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday April 04 2018, @06:18AM (6 children)
Gotta admit that dam argument lowered the credibility of the Sierra Club in my book a heckuva lot.
Before that, I thought they were all for the environment, but their meddling in that dam just made it clear to me they were just another obstructionist entity which derives its sustenance as a parasite, paid to get out the way and allow someone else to do something. Not much different from anyone else that has discovered a business model of how to make money by allowing someone else to do something.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:20AM (5 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:32AM (1 child)
The notion of having to truck salmon up past dams to spawn is just completely ridiculous.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday April 04 2018, @08:23AM
People are perfectly able to enjoy salmon without dedicating huge land masses to their spawning.
A truck load of fry delivered to an artificial spawn bed within reach of the sea will return so many salmon in 4 years you will have a problem dealing with their numbers. Tearing out dams and going back to Coal Power is not the answer.
Renewable energy without storage is never going to replace some form of stored energy. Hydro is the only storage mechanism we have.
Trucking salmon is not ridiculous. Its done everywhere hatcheries exist.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:34AM (1 child)
The notion of having to truck salmon up past dams to spawn is just completely ridiculous.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday April 04 2018, @08:04AM
I thought they had "fish ladders" for that...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @12:21AM
After the Civil War, southern states passed a bunch of laws to restrict black people. Sometimes the laws explicitly targeted them, while other times the targeting was less accurate, based instead on things like property ownership and reading tests. For example, there was a law passed that prohibited the carrying of firearms except if on horseback. It was very popular to try to restrict gun ownership by black people.
The NRA was created November 16, 1871. That makes it America's oldest civil rights organization. In the early years, the NRA put quite a bit of effort into opposing the new restrictions that democrats were using to target black people.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:12AM
Director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, released the following statement:
Coal (and nuke) is bad mmkay.
What a stunning and unexpected statement from the Director of Beyond Coal.
(Score: 1) by Barenflimski on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:30AM (12 children)
Politics are usually different than reality. Feelings vs. science may not have a clear winner immediately, but over time, reality wins. You can install whomever you want but, in the end, the will of the people, and what they expect, rule what consumers ultimately demand. Lower prices, a clean river, and flexibility.
--
"mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" -- Queen Grimhilde
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @10:20AM
Yeah.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @01:14PM (10 children)
So feelings rule science? Is that the "reality" of which you speak?
Here, it wasn't will of the people, but rather the high cost of coal and nuclear versus that of natural gas.
(Score: 1) by Barenflimski on Wednesday April 04 2018, @03:11PM (9 children)
Not sure how you came up with feelings rule science in what I wrote. I was referring to politics, which many times is feelings vs. science. I did note that lower prices are one thing that consumers demand.
How would you have worded it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @04:09PM
Khallow routinely makes reading comprehension mistakes. Don't worry about it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fritsd on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:13PM (2 children)
will of the people, and what they expect << reality
For example: if we kill off the bees with neonics, the people will still want and expect fresh fruit and veg in the shops.
Well, they can go climb apple trees while holding small paintbrushes then.
And hand-pollenate the tomatoes for on their pizza.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @12:26AM (1 child)
There is no real reason why any crop needs to be pollinated in order to bear fruit. It's just a genetic problem that our crops inherited from undomesticated ancestors.
You could even say the same of cows, which currently won't produce milk without giving birth first. We could fix that too. We could even make cows produce milk that already contains chocolate flavor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:54AM
Ok, what was the point of that? Doesn't have a thing to do with "the will of the people".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:19PM (4 children)
I already bolded the part that was the problem (and let us note that you brought the comparison of feelings and science up in the first place). You went from "reality" to the feelings of the masses. They are not the same.
Not at all, which is what I actually did. But since we're writing about it. New technologies cause shifts in what is most economic, obsoleting old technologies. That happened here. Past that, I don't think there would have been a point to FirstEnergy Solutions repositioning itself. It was overcommitted to coal and nuclear so adding the claimed renewable mix would have cost more for it than it would for other electricity companies with a weaker share of coal and nuclear. Betting on the future doesn't always work out and they happen to be one of the losers. I don't think there is an object lesson here beyond that.
(Score: 1) by Barenflimski on Thursday April 05 2018, @07:42AM (3 children)
In the context of people, decisions in politics are usually made by feelings, modified by science, which creates the "reality" we live in. In this case, I'm pointing out two ends of the spectrum, feelings and science. By definition they aren't equal, and in this case can be looked at as opposite sides of the spectrum. I'm not sure what upsets you about this, but your passion is appreciated.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @11:56AM (2 children)
That there's nothing in your posts to tell the two apart. It's not relevant to lecture on the "spectrum" of emotion and science in decision making, if no distinction is ever made.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)
The first post in this thread was a little confusing, but if you drop trying to parse the paragraph with perfect grammar/logic the meaning is clear. Then there is the ridiculous thread you engaged in. Are... are you trying to pass the Turing test??
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @06:51PM
Ok...
Here's what the "paragraph" looks like to me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 04 2018, @08:13AM (33 children)
Just another sick thing about ExxonMobil is that they have the resources to pivot to the green energy biz in a big way, but they won't do it. They even figured out they could not continue to sell oil they pumped up, way back in the 1980s or even earlier. Instead, they spend their immense wealth on propaganda, bribery, and corruption.
The arrant stupidity of these captains and titans of industry is breathtaking. They won't think long term. They don't see anything wrong with pushing propaganda and bribing and threatening politicians. I doubt that the fate of FirstEnergy will make much of an impression on them. The bunch of lawsuits they are now facing over the global warming they helped cause will get their attention, and might actually save them as well as all of us. If no one was suing them for their lying and the damages they're causing, they'd keep right on doing it until things really broke down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @11:45AM
Isn’t it funny that some significant powers in the greens are making BS their norm. Not saying it approaches big oil and the like. But when you are so divided you get into trench warfare via environmental policy when the shit is hitting the fan some catastrophic feedback loop is a likely result.
Dig in. Hate. Claim (or make) fake news on all sides. We aren’t immune to a global Easter island.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @01:09PM (30 children)
Sure, they are. Actual estimates [soylentnews.org] of ExxonMobile expenditures on "propaganda" are an order of magnitude or more lower than the Green side and many orders of magnitude lower than their profits. If they really were spending their immense wealth on this, you'd see a lot more propaganda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @01:33PM (29 children)
You do realize that if it is true that big oil hid the negative effects of their and related industries concerning global warming that it is a huge savings?
Far cheaper for bi tobacco to say cigs lead to the Marlboro man. And far more profitable since millions get addicted by the fud
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:08PM (28 children)
"IF". Where's the evidence? Meanwhile I can point to groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace which spend hundreds of millions a year on things like global warming propaganda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:41PM (27 children)
Ah yes. I forgot. No company would ever lie cheat or steal.
Those are only done by the evil government and unions.
Nothing to see at all. Only the environmental guys are wrong.
You are as blind as your mouthpiece allows.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:03PM (26 children)
They wouldn't, if there was no profit in it.
And yet the environmental guys are way outspending the other side. Somethings not quite right with the narrative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:27PM (3 children)
“They wouldn't, if there was no profit in it.”
Exactly. If there is profit in it they will lie cheat and steal.
Government isn’t for profit. It has faults. But this is where regulations keep the powerful in check. And companies need oversight. Or we get issues like Facebook is an example of currently
One of the most confusing aspects of not seeing thru fud is we get weird stuff like government is bad til our guy says it isn’t. Much like the tariffs Trump thinks he can drive thru with no worries. But I bet you think he will be fine but if it was Hillary calling for them you would be frothing at the mouth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:39AM (2 children)
They don't similarly keep governments in check. Government accounting is a notorious example. Private businesses have to report long term liabilities. Governments don't.
How much are you betting? More would be better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:09AM (1 child)
“They don't similarly keep governments in check. Government accounting is a notorious example. Private businesses have to report long term liabilities. Governments don't.”
You want to avoid short-term.
Private business reports quarterly.
Government agents report every 2-6 yrs.
You lost.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:27AM
Completely irrelevant.
So in other words, you claim that not only do governments fail to report accurate accounting figures, they report far less often? You're really selling this one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:44PM (18 children)
“And yet the environmental guys are way outspending the other side. Somethings not quite right with the narrative.”
Addressing this separately. To me this makes sense.
The companies get to hide behind “nothing is wrong” and that is cheap compared to the independent attempts to show that there is something going wrong in the environment.
Before the lead issue in Flint, the republicans hid behind nothing is wrong. And even when it got so bad they couldn’t hide they still largely said “nothing to see here”. The studies to show there was something there had to be more costly than just “nothing to see here”.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @12:36AM (2 children)
Lead pipes are a local issue, not a state issue. Flint has been run by democrats for decades. Neighboring cities replaced lead pipes at their own expense; why should Flint get this for free while those neighboring cities don't get reimbursed?
The fact that a state-level republican was forced to appoint somebody to manage Flint's finances does not erase the prior decades of failure to act. Under democrat control, Flint had gotten to the point where the problem was about to be "solved" by shutting down the water service entirely: Flint couldn't pay for the higher-quality water they were using.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @01:44AM
This is a laughable retelling of the facts.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:20AM
Actually, there are a fair number [nytimes.com] of cities in Flint's situation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:18AM (14 children)
So why is this supposed to be a winning strategy?
It didn't work for them and the cost of proving so was pretty cheap (basically a few thousand dollars for water testing and talking with local papers).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:51AM (13 children)
So why is this supposed to be a winning strategy?
Keeps shareholders at bay. Nothing like a non-voter.
“It didn't work for them and the cost of proving so was pretty cheap (basically a few thousand dollars for water testing and talking with local papers).”
Pretty cheap? We will see after the midterms.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:05AM (12 children)
Shareholders have nothing to do with with environmental regulation or climate change research, for example.
You could have just read the history [wikipedia.org] of the Flint water scandal. The people in charge had corrupt regulators hiding unfavorable test results. The whole thing broke open when an EPA regulator did independent testing on a resident's water and detected high levels of lead. It didn't take long (less than a year) and the main cost was that of the tests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:13AM (11 children)
“Shareholders have nothing to do with with environmental regulation or climate change research, for example.”
So when I invest in your company I shouldn’t look at any flaws. Especially not those you can’t address via fud.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:21AM (10 children)
You are committing a non sequitur argument since the shareholder doesn't enforce the laws of the land.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:44AM (9 children)
Humorous since I never claimed that.
The downfall of a fascist society is failure to monitor shareholders. They MUST be the only monitors. But Eventually you get one of thereddest states in the union seeing grassroots movements for better pay. Wait. Thought all boats were lifted.
I will leave it to you to reason the downfall of a democratic society.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:54AM (8 children)
That argument doesn't hold water with regulators. Nor for that matter with the public (who doesn't hold a great deal of trust in businesses). And shareholders are likely to become non-shareholders (rather than merely disgruntled voters), if they think a company is blowing off a legitimate environmental concern that contains great risk for the company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @04:08AM (7 children)
Oh yeah. I forgot. In your world view scams are brought out only via government employees. Not corporate shareholders (never ever). We can trust one subset of humans entirely and we can never trust the latter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @05:58AM (6 children)
I guess you're just not getting it. I never said that and this thread isn't about trusting shareholders. I merely disagreed with the bullshit claim that Big Oil and such were hiding (or even, for that matter, capable of hiding) the negative effects of fossil fuels like global warming (as well the more recent claim in the thread that "nothing is wrong" propaganda actually works effectively - the poster proposing that even gave an example, the Flint water crisis, where that wasn't true and simple, cheap water testing brought down a conspiracy).
There's no evidence for that. You ignore that the green side massively outspends Big Oil on the propaganda front - despite the fact that Big Oil can afford to hold its own yet doesn't bother to, and still can't get proportional traction among the public.
It's convenient to blame Big Oil cooties, but they aren't magically more adept at propaganda than their opponents, particularly by an order of magnitude. There's simpler explanations such as the widespread dishonesty and exaggeration of the climate change side and that there's no real new information coming in to change peoples' minds. Propaganda becomes very ineffective under those circumstances.
You need more than motive for the alleged Big Oil conspiracy. Show me the money!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @03:12PM (5 children)
There was just a story about an oil company CEO confessing to exactly what you claim they don't do. Dumbass khallow so stuck in propaganda.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @06:39PM (4 children)
No, there wasn't. Such a thing would have been huge news. Instead, we have dishonest attack pieces like this [thinkprogress.org]
The story then concludes
and
That in turn is very far from the accusation that this CEO was deliberately covering up climate change problems. And $33 million is nothing especially over two decades. They easily could have afforded three orders of magnitude more spending on that. And that's just one oil company.
You're wasting my time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @09:03PM (3 children)
The last comment was not me.
My issue with your claim is simply that it is not unreasonable for those paying to research something as complex as climate change to spend much more than Han those who claim simply “nothing to se here”. But when I see greens attacking nuclear plants n all forms are they lose me since I find their anti nuke stance trite.
I don’t get why you accept the anti climate peeps face value. Just a simple nothing to see here and you are good.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @10:28PM (2 children)
There are two obvious rebuttals here. First, extraordinary claims (particularly complex claims like that of catastrophic climate change and the subsequent calls for urgent, dramatic action) require extraordinary evidence. Second, even if we were to grant the alleged fairness of your proposal above, the climate change mitigation advocates vastly outspend their rivals anyway. They should be trouncing the opposition handily. It's time to think about why that's not happening.
I don't. I certainly don't take the "But it's snowing outside" crowd any more serious than I take the "blame everything on global warming" crowd. I'm a member of the "lukewarmists", namely, the idea that there is human-caused global warming and related problems, but these aren't bad enough that we need to address them right now. My view is that the lukewarmists have the only scientific (and economic!) argument in the batch.
First, we don't have the false certainty. In the hard sell for catastrophic climate change, do you ever hear them admitting that due to uncertainty in their observations that they could be off on climate change predictions by many decades or even centuries? The most important parameter in climatology, the long term temperature sensitivity of a doubling of CO2 is currently estimated [wikipedia.org] to be 1.5 C to 4.5 C per doubling. Since when have they discussed the implications of that? 4.5 C means that we're already looking at a huge increase in future temperature. At 1.5 C, it's centuries to get to significant levels of warming. There are similar huge bars in paleoclimate data, solar output before recent decades, the climate effects of weather, and climate change predictions (particularly those of economic harm from climate change).
Researchers hid adverse data. For example, the whole Climategate [wikipedia.org] thing happened in large part because numerous scientists would argue privately about various problems of their research while presenting a different public face because said problems would somehow aid critics. Saying one thing in private and another in public is a common sign of dishonesty. Another was attempts, also during that time frame to hide data from critics, a bit of which was illegal. Another hidden bit of data is related to the false certainty of the temperature sensitivity parameter above. They fail to mention that the simple 1-dimensional radiative model of climate change (which is relatively certain), only predicts roughly 1.5 C per doubling. The rest comes from net feedback of the whole system which hasn't been observed yet. So when they're claiming 1.5 C to 4.5 C per doubling as the range, what they aren't telling you is that this long term positive feedback, beyond that of the basic radiative model ranges from non-existent to 3 C per doubling on its own.
Every mistake is in favor of the catastrophic climate change model. The best known is the "Hockey Stick" graph [wikipedia.org] of 1999 which purported to show a flat global temperature graph over the past 1000 years until one gets to modern times. A few years later, a criticism of the paper showed that the statistical methods employed in the original paper would have resulted in a hockey stick shape due to the data massaging involved even if one started with random data.
The widespread employment of fallacies. Typical ones which weed out most mitigation arguments are confirmation bias, observation bias, argument from authority, Pascal's wager, and straw man arguments. We see X, therefore it must be due to "climate change" (even though it may have been happening for the past billion years!).
Prioritizing propaganda over science - "climate change" over "anthropogenic global warming" even though the latter is the accurate term, scientifically. Prioritizing climate change in turn over every other problem of mankind (such as announcing that we must not let the climate rise more than 1.5 C over preindustrial levels, even though we're doing a lot with the activity that generates the greenhouse gases).
Finally, the catastrophic climate change argument has all the hallmarks of a scam. We are being panicked into mitigation because supposedly a small rise in global temperature (currently at 1.5 C conveniently enough) is supposed to be the threshold of no return. There's hundreds of billions of dollars of public spending at stake, in energy, transportation, finance, etc and the only justification for it is FUD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @05:52AM (1 child)
And does the latest?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shell-grappled-with-climate-change-20-years-ago-documents-show/ [scientificamerican.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 06 2018, @06:47AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:56PM (2 children)
Citation needed, and even if you are correct that just means the Oil Barons have no need to advertise since they are ridiculously entrenched and it would likely backfire with how many people know the truth.
I guess your brain is still soft enough to absorb that crap though, not like they need to bleach your brain any more in their favor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:14AM
Why? What would be the point of the exercise?
In other words, you're already weaseling out of a losing argument.
What crap?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:42AM
Also, if you had actually read this thread you would have noticed that I gave such a citation earlier in this thread.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 04 2018, @08:39PM
Don't be silly. If they pivot away from oil, how exactly do they collect they usual billions in Evil Government Subsidies?