YourValentine wrote:
Really, GFF, I am losing a lot of respect for you in this discussion.
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Well, happily, that makes one of us. I appreciate you and have many times felt glad to be on a forum along with someone whose near perfect English gives me an opportunity for first hand insight into a culture and worldview I would not otherwise have. This conversation hasn't gone well, which is why I excused myself from it. We've had better before and may yet have better again. That said, I can live with or without your respect equally, so I'll leave you to your thoughts.
You can have another opinion - that is not something I would bother about. But to act like your opinion is based on level-headed reason while my opinion is just the result of ideolical blindness is what annoys me - mainly when the crystal clear facts show that you are so wrong. This has nothing to do with an "I told you so" position - I would have had much rather been wrong about the results of the catastrophe. I know from experience how the Japanese people feel because I was already around when Chernobyl happened. But it is typical for your dishonest reasoning that from the start you tried to blame me for not caring for the victims like my angst-driven alarmism would make it so much harder for them when in fact it was the apologists who refused to take the appropriate measures to protect the victims. In your opinion it must be an ideological partisan view just to open your eyes and look at the truth.
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I could have and probably should have been slightly less obnoxious, but taking 'ideology' and turning it into 'idealogical blindless' is a fine example of why having a different opinion makes it pretty much impossible to talk to you on this subject, and why I was feeling a little obnoxious in the first place. An ideology is an established set of beliefs that informs thinking and action and goals or hoped for outcomes, that is all. We all have ideologies. On the very first day of the nuclear crisis when not one single thing was known about what would develop, you declared safe nuclear technology dead and cast the accident as the result of the inherent irresponsibility of supporting nuclear policy. You did that all virtually without a single specific fact at your disposal, or anybody else's disposal. That is an ideology. When you don't need to know what's going to happen in order to make up your mind, you've already decided, and it's that quality in this discussion that I find unpleasant and pointless to engage with.
As for 'blaming you for not caring about the victims' and other smiliar liberties you've taken with my words, you are projecting your occassional slip into emotionally charged monkey screeching and poo flinging on to me. But I don't think that of you, I don't argue like that, and I didn't say that.
From the start you could have had the same information that I had. It did not come from some radical green forums or some "partisan" ideological magazines - the info was there for the whole world to see: A nuclear plant exploding in front of our very eyes on TV, the measured radiation values on the IAEA website and on the Kyodo website, a very moderate magazine close to the Japanese government. But instead of looking you chose to deny the facts - it was not me who was the partisan here. Hundreds of experts came out each day and evaluated the situation and it was not some idiotic ideological fanatics who started to re-consider their postion towards the nuclear power - it was the EU governments, the government of the USA and the Chinese government.
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Where an idea comes from is of little importance, as are anybody's motives, or how many people agree with it. Appeal to authority, appeal to motive, false dilemma, arugumentum ad populum, straw men, misleading vividness...they are long standing and well documented errors in reason that by definition do nothing to support conclusions. Is the idea independently right, or half right, or is it wrong? That is all that matters. I have denied nothing, making that unadulterated crap. I've tried to seek the biggest, clearest picture possible. Period.
I wrote paragraph after paragraph explaining to you that coal is not the alternative to nuclear power but you choose to ignore that and now you come back with the same old argument. The clima goals are just as important as the public security with regards to nuclear power and there won't be a return to coal fuelled power plants. The energy of the future will come from solar plants, wind energy , geothermal plants, tidal plants, bio mass plants. Maybe your country did not sign the Kyoto protocol and does not have a strategy to reduce co2 accordingly, I really do not know about it. But the countries who did sign and who do take the clima goals seriously will not switch off their nuclear plants and return to fossile energy, that is just not the case.
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You don't have to 'return' to fossil energy, you just have to arbitrarily cripple your nuclear fleet and keep your coal plants firing for years longer than necessary. Like Germany. So you can import electricity, at least in the short term, thereby ceding all control of the safety and conditions under which it is produced to somebody else entirely. If that's not anti nuclear ideology, I don't know what is.
That coal is a dirty, dirty prospect from cradle to grave is not 'the same old argument', it's a vital, relevant reflection of both the promise and the limitations of current and developing green technology. The fact that 'coal has to go' is about the only thing all parties everywhere can agree on.
It's almost certainly carelessly optimistic to conduct ourselves as though there is nothing but unicorns standing between April 15, 2011 and a glorious green tech future. After almost 25 years working in technology I will tell you that virtually nothing ever goes as planned. Really. You can count on nothing. We simply don't know how or honestly even *if* global energy needs will be met with the green technology that is here and on the horizon. We hope so. With attendant changes, many believe so. Activists like citing science, right up until they need to be applying the scientific method to a complex process like major global energy transition. Having a dogged, crippled, embattled nuclear industry as the legacy of Fukushima would be the very worst possible outcome.
To return to my example of cassettes and CDs, the technological development of cassettes continued into the late 80's or early 90's. Until the industry was sure, because it's *not* just about will. I want new, better nuclear technology in development right up until the second we're sure we don't need it anymore Otherwise contingency plans may be ancient, beleaguered nuke plants pressed into service well beyond their years, or dirty old coal plants spewing particulate, greenhouse gasses and radiation 24/7/365. While the German plan might be right for Germany, it will be decades before the world sorts out it's future energy mix. I don't want 50 and 60 year old nuke plants sitting around the planet while that's happening. Respectfully, neither should you.
