Mark Lynas pens error-riddled, cost-less nuke op-ed

[bananas]

http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/13/mark-lynas-error-cost-nuke-op-ed/

Mark Lynas pens error-riddled, cost-less nuke op-ed
April 13, 2011

UPDATE: In the comments, Lynas says Breakthough Institute made the initial mistake. They must have fixed it before I saw it. But there are so many errors that it’s still not clear who got what wrong.

And the winner of the most egregiously error-riddled paragraph published in a presumably fact-checked newspaper op-ed this year:

According to some recent number crunching by the Breakthrough Institute, a centrist environmental think tank, phasing out Japan’s current nuclear generation capacity and replacing it with wind would require a 1.3-billion-acre wind farm, covering more than half the country’s total land mass. Going for solar instead would require a similar land area, and would in economic terms cost the country more than a trillion dollars.

No, it’s not Charlie Sheen weighing into the energy debate. And no, there aren’t any typos. Sadly, this breathtaking collection of whoppers is by none other than Mark Lynas, author of the excellent book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.

I’m not quite certain what is more depressing — that Lynas wrote this paragraph in the first place and has since reposted it at the Economist’s online nuclear debate (a debate that is, typically, poorly framed). Or that not one person at the LA Times, Economist, or McLatchy thought the numbers looked funny or self-contradictory enough to spend even 10 seconds on Google to fact-check them. Or that even two days later the head-exploding errors are still there.

See how many errors you can count before reading the rest of the post.

While I realize that “acres” is not a metric most people work with often, presumably if you are going to use acres you would at least check on Google to make sure your answer is not wrong by, say, a factor of 1000! Or that you haven’t gotten the area of Japan wrong by a factor of 30! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

<snip>

This doesn't surprise me, I've found that pro-nukes frequently get their math wrong by several orders of magnitude.
I've learned to never believe the numbers from a pro-nuke because they are so often wrong.

[Zoeisright]

1. Yep. And when they're not making mistakes, they're covering up accidents.

[Nederland]

2. So the guy wrote billion instead of million? (nt)

[kristopher]

3. No, he compromised his integrity to defend the fission industry.

[Nederland]

4. Question

Is everyone who disagrees with you immoral?

[kristopher]

5. Ah the joys of your pretty pretty yet meaningless words.

There is an objective reality that assertions are judged against. If you want to assert that there is no objective reality again, be my guest.

[Nederland]

6. Yes, there is an objective reality

What you seems to fail to grasp is that anytime someone disagrees with you, there are four possibilities:

1) You are wrong but don't realize it.
2) They are wrong but don't realize it.
3) You are wrong and know it, but are lying for nefarious purposes.
4) They are wrong and know it, but are lying for nefarious purposes.

From what I've seen, you always jump to conclude its #4. Possibility #1 doesn't even register in your mind. I suspect you do this because it is not enough for a person who disagrees with you to simply be mistaken or ignorant, they must be evil.

[kristopher]

8. I can see where you might think that, but your belief explains why #4 is most appropriate

Speaking of me you state that you believe "that anytime someone disagrees with you...From what I've seen, you always jump to conclude its #4. Possibility #1 doesn't even register in your mind. I suspect you do this because it is not enough for a person who disagrees with you to simply be mistaken or ignorant, they must be evil."

Let's isolate the example of you using the same process that I apply: "From what I've seen..." you write.

Why would what you have seen form a basis for you to establish a default that is in opposition to giving every remark made the sort of 'benefit of the doubt' that you feel I am obligated to employ?

That is the reality that you attempt to deny for others, that things like patterns of behavior and the social/political/economic context are are relevant. In all normal discourse and as indicated by your choices, motives matter; understanding motive is always a part of interpreting the validity of the information content. To establish those motives we use, as you have done, things like patterns of behavior and/or the social/political/economic context of the discussion.

One of your favorite strategies of obfuscation is to attempt to deny this reality and portray presumptions based on patterns or context as if they were failures of reason. In some instances that might be true, but you pervert both the valid concept and the application to discussion.

[Nederland]

9. Response

Why would what you have seen form a basis for you to establish a default that is in opposition to giving every remark made the sort of 'benefit of the doubt' that you feel I am obligated to employ?

That is the reality that you attempt to deny for others, that things like patterns of behavior and the social/political/economic context are are relevant. In all normal discourse and as indicated by your choices, motives matter; understanding motive is always a part of interpreting the validity of the information content. To establish those motives we use, as you have done, things like patterns of behavior and/or the social/political/economic context of the discussion.

I am not establishing a default that is in opposition to giving every remark made the benefit of the doubt. I give you exactly the same sort of benefit of the doubt that I feel everyone deserves. The difference between you and I lies in what we each believe we can know for certain. Yes, motives matter, but the truth is that you can never get inside someone else's head and know for certain what their motives are. I understand this, which is why when I refer to your motives I begin with the phrase "I suspect...". I begin my speculation concerning your motives with a conditional statement that explicitly declares that what follows I do not know for certain. In contrast, when you refer to Mark Lynas's motives, you offer no such conditional, you simply say "he compromised his integrity...", as if you know this for a fact. You make a cut and dried statement regarding his motives, as if you have a view into his head and know for certain what his motives are. You don't, and you shouldn't act as if you do.

[kristopher]

10. Why "shouldn't" I?

The messaging used is standard, and it is built around a goal that is easy to identify and equally easy to police for accuracy. Given the current information war and the exercise I'm currently engaged in, I don't see a need to look further than the functionality of the message.

It is exactly what you do. The fact that you think adding insincere qualifiers changes the nature of your acts doesn't make it so. You are engaging in the same behavior and then playing a game with words. If you were not, there are dozens of others on this forum that you could be having this same discussion with, but the fact that you are having it with me specifically is a significant point of data in and of itself that contributes a great deal of meaning to your actual words.

[XemaSab]

11. "Given the current information war..."

What information war?

People here are not soldiers on a battlefield, we're drinking buddies sitting in a pub arguing about which is better: Star Wars or Star Trek.

There are people who feel passionately about Star Wars, and think that Star Trek is a lesser franchise, and there are people who take the opposite approach. The discussion gets heated, yes, but YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE ACCUSING PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU OF BEING ON THE PAYROLL OF LUCAS OR RODDENBERRY.

If you think that the E/E forum is in any way more politically relevant than sitting around bullshitting in a bar, maybe it's time for you to take a break.

[kristopher]

12. Then why are YOU so irritated by me?

Why did you, for years, attempt to convince people to not respond to my posts with your "don't feed the kea" campaign?

That didn't seem to be something that would result from a discussion on the level of preference over a TV series...

Do you recall the trigger? You wanted to discredit wind energy by grossly exaggerating the avian mortality issue and I called you on it.

I'll stand by my characterization of conflict over the control of information, thank you anyway.

[XemaSab]

13. I'm actually not as irritated by you as you think I am

I just find your complete lack of introspective capacity amusing.

[kristopher]

14. This might interest you.

I prefer not to engage in discussion on this topic as a matter of method, so I will not respond to anything else on this thread. But I don't mind sharing some basic thinking about research strategy at this point in time. For this particular conversation you could look at section IV of this link.
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/Materialism.htm

The general views of Weber bear on recent discussions generally.
http://www.criticism.com/md/weber1.html

I also want to make clear that I'm far, far more interested in processes and cultural dynamics than I am in judging the actions of those on DU no matter what they believe or do. In fact, I've greatly enjoyed participating in the discussions - heartburn and all.

[XemaSab]

15. Thank you for this response

In the interests of sharing about ourselves, here's where I'm coming from:

I think we are totally screwed as far as climate change goes. I think we're going to make the shift towards renewables, but it's not going to be this week, and next week doesn't look so good either.

Oil and coal have done a lot to trash the planet. Oil wells are horrible; coal mines are horrible. Fossil fuels are horrible and they're killing us and everything around us.

A lot of the existing renewable energy development that has been constructed involves putting some sort of large-scale permanent infrastructure on what was once open space. Many of the proposals for future renewable energy development involve putting some sort of permanent infrastructure on what is now open space. (You might be interested in the the thread I posted about Portugal. There's good news and bad news over there as far as renewables go.)

If I thought that we could build enough wind farms and large-scale solar developments to curb climate change and stop the burning of oil and coal, I might think differently about industrial-scale developments on open space. Such as it is, I think we're screwed.

If existing species such as the kit fox are going to survive a changing climate, they need lots of habitat. For example, maybe part of their habitat will become too dry, but another part will remain suitable, and maybe after a few generations young kit foxes will be able to re-colonize the areas that have become dry. If there's industrial development on part of their habitat, then that will leave the species with less capacity to withstand climate change.

I'm almost at the point where I believe in original sin. I think that we humans can have the BEST intentions, but no matter what we do, we will wind up somehow making a mess of the whole thing.

For right now, I am focused on whatever causes the least amount of additional disturbance to sensitive habitats. I don't think that industrial-scale wind and solar on open space can fix whatever we've brought upon ourselves with fossil fuels, so I just can't support them on a large scale.

I am open to the future of technologies such as wind and tidal energy. I think geothermal is great, and it's really the one technology that I think we should expand into wild areas as it currently exists. Finally, there's a MASSIVE amount of land in our cities for industrial-scale solar energy. Why don't we put panels up on the roof of the Target? Why don't we put panels up to shade the Wal-Mart parking lot? There's literally no reason why open space should be the preferred alternative for solar. None.

So that's where I'm coming from. :hi:

[bananas]

7. "there are so many errors that it’s still not clear who got what wrong"

"there are so many errors that it’s still not clear who got what wrong"
"See how many errors you can count before reading the rest of the post."

You got one - keep trying!