Clean energy as culture war

reddit-time · 5 days

This is bad news, because it means that the conversation isn't about what's rational anymore, but about that ever-nebulous thing, "the American way of life". It's bad news, because people have started to pollute and over-consume simply out of spite:

consider the study Ryan Sager highlighted a while back, showing that many SUV owners don’t merely think their choice of vehicles is harmless or morally neutral, but positively virtuous. Apparently the “moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals.” Note two things here. First, this is classic ressentiment: It’s not just that SUVs are great in themselves because they somehow “embody” some set of ideals. They’re good just because they symbolize an inversion of the “anti-American” values of critics. Second, think what it reveals that people feel the need to construct these kinds of absurd rationalizations—to make their cars heroic rather than simply denying that they do much harm. It betrays an incredible sensitivity, not to excessive taxes or regulations on the vehicles, but to the feeling of being judged.

Source

randomb0y · 6 days

What evidence?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=evidence+for+global+warming

Who are these scientists who are most informed? How did they quantify that? Is a scientist who works for an oil company studying climate change as informed as a scientist who works for an environment movement?

I don't think there are very many climate scientists who work directly for either oil companies or the environmental movement. It also isn't necessarily the case that funding will buy biased results; the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was largely funded by the Koch brothers but got results that supported the mainstream view, for example.

Anyways, the vast majority of scientists who specialize in climate accept anthropogenic global warming; climate skeptics have tended to come from other fields.

How is that even relevant?

It's relevant because you seemed to imply that there are greater financial incentives for supporting anthropogenic global warming than opposing it.

The fact of the matter is that as it has gotten more coverage, more holes are punched into the whole "man-made" element of global warming which leads to less funding for those who have dedicated their careers to it.

What "holes"? Granted, there have been such objections over the years, but I don't know of any that haven't been refuted by empirical evidence.

Now they are all of a sudden saying that it is much worse than they have let on and we need to put more money into studying it further.

I don't see any sign (at least not in the article), that climate scientists actually are asking for extra funding, or any funding more than the usual amount. There's nothing about funding in it at all.

randomb0y · 6 days

I suppose I'll come forward then: I downvoted you.

I downvoted you because you made a rehashed creationist argument that poisons the well instead of dealing with the evidence. I downvoted because the argument doesn't even make sense, given that the amounts of money at stake in climate science funding don't even hold a candle to the amounts of money that oil, coal, and gas companies make. I downvoted, because I'm quite frankly tired of seeing the same hackneyed, easily-debunked arguments over and over again every time this issue comes up.

randomb0y · 6 days

And yet the hivemind isn't downvoting this contrarian comment from the same thread.

nld242 didn't get downvoted for "heretical thoughts", he got downvoted for making a comment which was trite, unconvincing, and simply bad.

JeromeTomorrow · 6 days

Because he's talking about a straw man version of the environmentalist position.

michaelboston80 · 7 days

Wouldn't an easy solution to this be for the government to privatize schools so that parents can pick which schools don't have their child's best interests at heart?

I think it would be quite likely that privatization would just make things worse. Just compare the level of advertising on NPR and PBS to that of commercial radio and tv channels.

After all, if schools are just a commercial institution like any other, why not maximize profit by advertising to the students? Might privatization lead to a situation were only the rich can afford to send their kids to advertising-free schools?

I find it nigh impossible to look at the world around us and conclude that allowing commerce to pervade even deeper into the public sphere won't make this trend worse. But, I don't think it's about making government bigger per se, but of attitude. Indeed, I think a big part of the problem is that people who claim to merely be opponents of big government end up promoting for-profit enterprises at the expense of other types of institutions. Too many people, seeing that totalitarian governments failed to achieve the public good, conclude that totalitarian markets must therefore be optimal, even though the former does not imply the latter.

STJRedstorm · 11 days

There are a lot of nonsensical things in this article but this stuck out to me:

They may also have a degree in a hard science or engineering—skills that transfer easily to the more remunerative jobs in investment banks or global consultancies.

Now, the usual critique of the US economy is that we're too focused on finance and moving money around instead of things that are actually productive. Usually these critiques are coupled with a call for more students to become scientists and engineers in order to remedy our situation.

But Mr. Stephens in his infinite wisdom has different advice: Those students should learn math so that they can become "quants" and move money around faster than ever, presumably.

It's also puzzling to me, because in my experience an education in the hard sciences is geared towards scientific research, not investment banking or consultancy. Of course, that's not to say that there aren't some skills and knowledge that could transfer- but the former scientists and engineers who become quants aren't typical; I didn't know of anyone who majored in science or engineering who did so in order to become an investment banker.

es-335 · 13 days

I also can't help but notice that the label of "terrorism" (and the narratives that go with it), seem to be skewed towards Muslims.

Remember when that tax protester flew a plane into a federal building in a suicide attack? It was essentially the same thing as the 9/11 attacks (albeit on a smaller scale)- and yet the federal government was quick to say that it was "not terrorism".

So we're left with an apparent double standard: when a Muslim commits an act of mass violence, it's terrorism. When a white guy does the same thing, it's merely an isolated “criminal act".

In the context of other acts of violence, you start to see diverging narratives: They say that the July 7th London bombings were acts of terrorism by Muslim extremists, but the Oklahoma City bombings were just an isolated incident. When Nidal Malik Hassan shot a bunch of people, it was part of a trend; when Anders Breivik shoots a bunch of people, it's just an isolated incident.

Thus when profiling is proposed, it's inevitably going to be profiling of Muslims and specifically not of right-wing white males, because mere "isolated incidents", like Breivik and McVeigh and Joseph Stack and Jared Lee Loughner etc. don't merit profiling, but a "trend" like Muslim extremism does.

uff_the_fluff · 1 month

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that the hipsters used to rebel. When the hipster subculture started it was very anti-corporate consumerism -hence the easily parodied disdain for anything "mainstream". But when the consumerist machine co-opted it (as it inevitably does to underground youth cultures), the hipster culture didn't fade away like other youth cultures did- it evolved.

Likewise, I remember a time, not to many years ago, when hipsters were associated with apathy, cynicism, and irony- and like the disdain for mainstream culture, their attitude was easily parodied. I think the shift towards earnestness and enthusiasm is a sort of evolution within the subculture, a reaction against it's earlier, more tiresome form, rather than an essential quality of "hipsterism" in general.

CrossingTheT · 1 month

Heaven is also other people.

InternetFreedom1 · 1 month

With the current systems in place, Reddit can be used ...as itself to censor unpopular speech.

That's kind of the point.

pseudoxan · 1 month

They shall play nothing but Beatallica covers.

shenpen · 1 month

If you can't think of such a scenario, then you're one step closer to admitting moral facts exist.

I think you're assuming too much. Even if there are moral intuitions or judgement that are universal among humans (e.g. that torture, rape, and genocide are bad), why should that correspond to the absolute, objective moral facts?

I think the evidence we have shows that the source of our moral intuitions is the way our brains are "wired", due to evolution, culture and so on. So yes, we humans will almost universally find torture, rape, and genocide to be morally repugnant- but not because of objective moral facts (if they exist, they seem to be causally inert).

zillah1985 · 1 month

In the abstract, sure. After all, opposing government does not necessarily amount to opposing altruism, and libertarians will argue that e.g. lowering taxes will allow people to give more to charity.

But I find it hard to look at the libertarian movement and not notice a far more prevalent undercurrent of what might be called selfishness. The overall attitude of the movement is one of individualism rather than social cooperation; those endorsements of charity are far outnumbered by Gordon Gekko-esque exhortations that greed (or at least unbridled self-interest) is good. Ayn Rand, who famously claimed that selfishness is a virtue, is one of the most popular philosophers among libertarians. While libertarian opposition to government doesn't necessarily imply a pro-business stance, libertarian rhetoric overwhelmingly tends to favor the market over civil society as the best means of dealing with society's problems- sometimes going as far as to claim that for-profit institutions are intrinsically superior to non-profit institutions.

Reason magazine itself is far from immune from these trends, which is why this attempt to "set the record straight" rings hollow.

DrMarson · 2 months

The problem isn't that people inferred that you think the US is a direct democracy. The problem is that you are attributing laws like SOPA, PIPA, etc. to a hypothetical direct democracy, even though those laws were proposed and/or passed in a real-life republic. When you take into account that SOPA and PIPA were actually opposed by the population (and the other laws in the list are contentious at best), your examples seem to refute your conclusion.

BBQCopter · 2 months

Why democracy is fail: Let's say you have a country where 51% of the people are green, and 49% of the people are red. The green vote to enslave the red, and the red vote against it. The reds lose 49% to 51%. The reds are now enslaved. Is this moral? Of course not.

But does this actually happen? How many modern democracies have slavery?

Granted, there have been historical examples of democracies with slavery (ancient Athens, the US before 1965), but these states denied the franchise to slaves (which is usually prevented by constitutions in modern democracies) and existed at a time when non-democratic states also had slavery. Indeed, almost all of the countries that had legal slavery even in the 20th century were either dictatorships (Nazi Germany) or monarchies (Saudi Arabia).

candios · 2 months

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20051026060546/uncyclopedia/images/a/ab/Radial_engine.gif

zimian · 2 months

I always curious about people who say these sorts of things: do you think that exponential population growth can be sustained indefinitely on a finite planet?

"Human ingenuity" might allow us to sustain our population (within limits) without resulting in wars over resources, but it's not so magical that it will allow us to break the laws of thermodynamics.

accountt1234 · 2 months

Use more conventional solar cells based on silicon rather than rare elements?

Joseph357 · 2 months

Did someone else suggest this on reddit before? For some reason this was the exact thing that popped into my mind when I saw this article.

Z3F · 2 months

"job creators."

yalc · 2 months

I should probably warn you that UTD doesn't have a chemical engineering major.

/chemistry major

CletusDarby · 2 months

Nico - "These Days"

Fooly · 2 months

Why not link to the original article?

In any case, despite having watched many-a-ted talk in my day, I have to admit the criticisms are on the money:

Perhaps the biggest complaint I heard was that TED smells of corporatism...Yes, people want new and entertaining ideas but feel alienated by the branding and packaging reminiscent of the corporate Silicon Valley establishment. “Consumers” are savvy, and they know when they are being sold to. So many of the TED talks take on the form of those famous patent medicine tonic cure-all pitches of previous centuries, as though they must convince you not through the content of what’s being said but through the hyper-engaging style of the delivery. Each new “big idea” to “inspire the world” and “change everything” pitched from the TED stage reminds me of the swamp root and snake oil liniment being sold from a wagon a hundred years past. As Mike Bulajewski pointed out in a Tweet, “TED’s ‘revolutionary ideas’ mask capitalism as usual, giving it a narrative of progress and change.”

reddit4 · 2 months

Is it the same document that was admitted to be faked by an AGW alarmist?

Did you even read the article you linked to? He admitted that he impersonated someone else to obtain the documents - that was the "deception". The authenticity of the memo itself is still disputed.

How many scandals from this fakery to the East Anglia artificial fudge factors

Nope, just another case of climate change deniers quoting out of context and distorting the facts.

elcapitanloco

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elcapitanloco

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