The Science of Why We Don't Believe in Science

[Gorth]

If the birds are pigeons, then I'm all for more wind turbines. The infestation levels in this neighbourhood is really bad. Simply not enough natural enemies.

[Walsingham]

If the birds are pigeons, then I'm all for more wind turbines. The infestation levels in this neighbourhood is really bad. Simply not enough natural enemies.

 

I absolutely loathe pigeons. Almost as much as I loathe the sentimental British attitude to the little bastard vermin. When bird flu variant H101 kills 20% of people it's going to be due to all the pigeon barf all over London.

[TrashMan]

 

Wut? No one commented on my wall of text?

 

I am dissapoint.

You lost me at anime

 

 

It's an example.

You have to use SOMETHING for an example, and anime preconceptions is a good one.

 

How can you call yourself open-minded and objective if you stop reading simply because you don't like the example used?

Honestly, all you are doing is proving everything I wrote RIGHT.

[Walsingham]

Joke overshoot. Adjust and fire for effect.

[alanschu]

Weird.  This is the entire abstract for me.  The title of the article is "The avian benefits of wind energy: A 2009 update"

 

 

 

This article summarizes the threats that wind farms pose to birds before surveying the recent literature on avian mortality and summarizing common methodological problems with such studies. Based on operating performance in the United States and Europe, the paper then offers a preliminary calculation of the number of birds killed per kilowatt-hour kWh generated for wind electricity, fossil fuel, and nuclear power systems. The study estimates that wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil fueled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh. Within the uncertainties of the data used, the estimate means that wind farms killed approximately 20,000 birds in the United States in 2009 but nuclear plants killed about 330,000 and fossil fueled power plants more than 14 million. The paper concludes that further study is needed, but also that fossil fueled power stations appear to pose a much greater threat to birds and avian wildlife than wind farms and nuclear power plants.

 

Granted, it's a 2009 update, but I don't see any references to the 2006 data.

 

 

 

 

That's a lot to surmise from my simply posting an ironic news story.

 

Your posting history precedes you.  Pointing out that windmills have a "devastating effect on the environment" because a bird got killed by one, with follow ups about how countless birds get killed and a statement that can be inferred as dismissive because oil spills are accidents and not a part of normal operation, are things that lead me to that conclusion.  So I'd challenge that it wasn't so much me surmising it, but making a hypothesis with some level of support.  Sarcasm is tough to detect on the internet, but your post didn't seem sarcastic, given your historic position on energy.  If I was wrong, however, my mistake.

 

 

 

 

Don't know enough to answer that question, not sure anyone does. It does however bring up the point that when claiming an energy source is "clean", especially with low intensity sources, one has to consider the energy cost and environmental impact of construction, maintenance and decommissioning of that energy source, and not just view it as perfect source of clean energy. For example, a study was done that building an electric car takes so much extra energy that the only way energy is saved if that car is driven for many years at long distances, which few are because of their limited range. Also corn ethanol, although considered "renewable", actually takes about as much energy to produce as it provides. In general, if something costs a lot more, it's because it consumes a lot more resources, thus the desirability to have the market determine which energy sources win out, as those are likely to be the most efficient.

 

For sure.  Unless a car is being powered by a "clean energy source," all the warm fuzzy feelings of driving one should be mitigated because if it's being powered by a coal power plant, then ironically it can potentially be responsible for more pollution as coal (if I'm not mistaken) burns dirtier than oil.  It's certainly complex, because there's a lot of opportunity costs involved.  It'd shift the pollution generation from a city to presumably somewhere rural, which may be better?  I don't know.

 

I remember some of the paradox with solar power panels being stored/shipped in environmentally poor Styrofoam containers and whatnot.  It's also why I'm less inclined to care as much about recycling plastic, as opposed to something like aluminum.

 

 

Although unless we decide to scale back a LOT, that we have some sort of ecological impact is pretty much inevitable.  From hitting animals with our cars, to windmills and tar sands killing birds, evaluation needs to be done to on what is considered acceptable, while not completely ignoring economic implications as well.

[Orogun01]

Joke overshoot. Adjust and fire for effect.

I'll get him next time

[TrashMan]

Joke overshoot. Adjust and fire for effect.

 

*Walsingham rolls a critical miss*

"Command, critical faliure caused a bad pun backlash! Our ammunitions stores exploded! We got dead and wounded everywhere! Send medics!"

[Walsingham]

You fool, that's not blood, it's toffee!

[TrashMan]

My ignorance is my shield!

 

Have at thee! I disbelif in toffee!

[Orogun01]

We'd be a fun bunch if we ever get into the same room.

[Walsingham]

We'd be a fun bunch if we ever get into the same room.

 

You're right. We will need some kind of Obsidian drinking game.

[Amentep]

If you are a fan of anime, you surely faced a lot of prejudice. People looking down on you, or considering you weird for watching it, since they consider it childish or stupid.

Apparently its the 1980s again, when anime in its natural habitat was a hard find and those who did find it were thought to be watching cheap kids fiction and not startling cinematic movies and tv shows of uncompromised vision that just happened to show nudity as well. When Galaxy Express 999 squeaked to theaters in NY and LA, when Castle of Cogliostro was mostly known as a laserdisc game called "Cliff Hangers" and 7 Zark 7 was seen as an integral part of the Battle of the Planets.

 

In the future - we are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives - from around the mid-2000s on, I will not know anyone amid my niece's age and younger who will not watch anime or read manga. Do they look down on themselves in this utopian future of anime, flying cars and jetpacks, you may ask? No, my startling visions of that glorious future that awaits us all indicates that they will be well adjusted and happy with their anime and manga...but less so with flying cars and jet packs.

 

Back to the present, however, I wasn't on the internet in the 1980s so am unsure how I'm posting this message to a forum that won't exist for 20 more years. I shall declare it "movie magic" and move on.

Edited July 9, 2013 by Amentep

[Orogun01]

 

If you are a fan of anime, you surely faced a lot of prejudice. People looking down on you, or considering you weird for watching it, since they consider it childish or stupid.

Apparently its the 1980s again, when anime in its natural habitat was a hard find and those who did find it were thought to be watching cheap kids fiction and not startling cinematic movies and tv shows of uncompromised vision that just happened to show nudity as well. When Galaxy Express 999 squeaked to theaters in NY and LA, when Castle of Cogliostro was mostly known as a laserdisc game called "Cliff Hangers" and 7 Zark 7 was seen as an integral part of the Battle of the Planets.

 

In the future - we are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives - from around the mid-2000s on, I will not know anyone amid my niece's age and younger who will not watch anime or read manga. Do they look down on themselves in this utopian future of anime, flying cars and jetpacks, you may ask? No, my startling visions of that glorious future that awaits us all indicates that they will be well adjusted and happy with their anime and manga...but less so with flying cars and jet packs.

 

Back to the present, however, I wasn't on the internet in the 1980s so am unsure how I'm posting this message to a forum that won't exist for 20 more years. I shall declare it "movie magic" and move on.

 

I do love it when you talk film.

[TrashMan]

We'd be a fun bunch if we ever get into the same room.

 

Three men enter, one man leaves.

[TrashMan]

In the future - we are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives - from around the mid-2000s on, I will not know anyone amid my niece's age and younger who will not watch anime or read manga. Do they look down on themselves in this utopian future of anime, flying cars and jetpacks, you may ask? No, my startling visions of that glorious future that awaits us all indicates that they will be well adjusted and happy with their anime and manga...but less so with flying cars and jet packs.

Back to the present, however, I wasn't on the internet in the 1980s so am unsure how I'm posting this message to a forum that won't exist for 20 more years. I shall declare it "movie magic" and move on.

 

 

I wish I lived in that future of yours...

Because I don't.

[Amentep]

I wish I lived in that future of yours...

Because I don't.

 

 

If you'd said "People looking down on you, or considering you weird for watching it, since they consider it to only be hentai about tentacle rape" or something, I possibly could have agreed with you.

 

But anecdotally speaking, the vast majority of people I meet seem to accept anime an manga now in ways they didn't in the 80s.  The 80s was total wilderness where you usually only saw films if someone traded you a copy of a copy of a copy and everyone said "cartoons?  That's for kids!"  Now days you can walk into Best Buy and buy anime films.  You can get Studio Ghibli films at Wal*Mart.  The stuff isn't just seen as "for kids", I know a lot of adults who've watched some anime films.  Not in the diehard way, but in the way of casual people watching stuff.

[alanschu]

I'm not big on anime, but will definitely vouch for it being a lot more common in and around my life now than it was when I was growing up.  Could be a Western Canadian thing?

[Orogun01]

Yep, everyone its fine with anime nowadays. Cosplayers are still creepy though.

[Walsingham]

The first man to talk about female cosplayers will be told to stand outside for ten minutes.

[Amentep]

Stand outside of what?

[alanschu]

Speaking of cosplayers, even Edmonton has an Animeathon!

[Walsingham]

Stand outside of what?

 

*everyone turns to the 4th wall, and stares*

[TrashMan]

If you'd said "People looking down on you, or considering you weird for watching it, since they consider it to only be hentai about tentacle rape" or something, I possibly could have agreed with you.

 

But anecdotally speaking, the vast majority of people I meet seem to accept anime an manga now in ways they didn't in the 80s.  The 80s was total wilderness where you usually only saw films if someone traded you a copy of a copy of a copy and everyone said "cartoons?  That's for kids!"  Now days you can walk into Best Buy and buy anime films.  You can get Studio Ghibli films at Wal*Mart.  The stuff isn't just seen as "for kids", I know a lot of adults who've watched some anime films.  Not in the diehard way, but in the way of casual people watching stuff.

 

 

I like to meet the people you meet.

 

Cause generally speaking, here on the internet more people are more familiar with anime. And since you "meet" a redicolous number of poeple over the internet, the idea that "most people accept anime" sounds good. Except it's not so. A whole lot of poeple on the internet don't. They might know that various kinds of peopel watch it, or that it has older audience, but they still consider it childish.

And then you run into all the people who aren't on the internet or who don't run around in circles where they are exposed to anime - they know little to nothing about it and don't care.

 

It being availalbe at Wallmarts? So is "babies first X" and Carebares toys and lord knows what not.

Beign realidy avialable is a completley different thing from being accepted. Acknowledign it's existence is different from accepting that it's not for kids and very childish grown-ups.

 

Hence why, from my experience, the idea that anime is widly accepted is untrue.

Edited July 11, 2013 by TrashMan

[alanschu]

I wouldn't say anime is "wildly accepted."  But at the same time, a lot of stuff I like (like gaming) still isn't something I'd consider wildly accepted either.

[Wrath of Dagon]

This alternative energy stuff sounds great! http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/07/13/germans-re-thinking-turn-to-green-energy/