Opinion: A Word On Today's Society

[GreatEmerald]

it surely depends on where we get the news we read, if we hear issues at Fukushima or not. Claiming that such articles are "Hollywood anti radiation" propaganda is too easy. Every main stream media is somehow biased. In the western countries MSM has to be compatible with the investors opinions, and with political ethics they present. It is common that Journalist and authors of news agencies and publishers have to sign such ethics contracts when they begin their job.

In other countries like Russia the agenda of the MSM is more depend on the government, and much less on big corporations.

so just a recent example from Russia Today, about the situation at the Fukushima plant:
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-embarra...tive-leak-332/

Yes, in fact it's so dependent on the government that of late your quoted Russia Today has been spouting nothing else than propaganda and lies. They would do anything to make the US and its allies look bad. So if there is an example of a good news source, that is definitely not it.

Here's a better news source (it is US-based, but it's environment-centred and always quotes their own sources):

http://inhabitat.com/tag/fukushima/

Now about Fukushima, its handling as of late has been really incompetent, that's a fact. Yet the overall effect of Fukushima is in no way comparable to Chernobyl. Not in the slightest. It's already safe to return to Fukushima, while it's not the case with Chernobyl, and the time difference is immense.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

No, they can clean up their own lives naturally, but they often don't. We have a significant number of people in the U.S. right now that won't use energy-saving lightbulbs solely because they see it as associated with the wrong political party.

Some often times don't right away, or faster than you like, because they have other things going on. This is what makes dictatorships universally wrong(among many other things). A dictator would force them to prioritize lightbulbs over things which are clearly more important.

Besides, the bill banning the incandescent lightbulb was cooked up by a republican. So the rebellion that people are putting on display is a bipartisan matter, not a solo party one. Personally, I don't see a problem with it; the government had to know that by being dictatorial that people would rebel against it. Actually there's a small part of me that is a little heartbroken about it. Of all the things that the government would force us to hate, I wouldn't choose a more efficient lightbulb as a target. And yes, I mean that - "force us to hate" - tyranny breeds resentment. By banning one bulb, they made some people hate another lightbulb.

They simply do not know how to run our lives better than we can run our lives. They are not our bosses. We are their bosses. "You want to force me to use this? No. I hate this. I'll never use it."

Ultimately, energy saving lightbulbs are mainly a cause c?l?bre. I never thought I would see the day that environmentalists would become pro-mercury, but here it is. Sure, each bulb only carries trace amounts of mercury, but people are using(and throwing away) millions of those bulbs. Trace isn't so trace when trace is multiplied by the millions on top of millions.

[Fenrin]

Yes, in fact it's so dependent on the government that of late your quoted Russia Today has been spouting nothing else than propaganda and lies.[...]

Russia Today gives a refreshing contrast to the western mainstream media. Not everything is propaganda and lies, just like in our MSM of the "democratic" west.

[gamerk2]

Some often times don't right away, or faster than you like, because they have other things going on. This is what makes dictatorships universally wrong(among many other things). A dictator would force them to prioritize lightbulbs over things which are clearly more important.

Besides, the bill banning the incandescent lightbulb was cooked up by a republican. So the rebellion that people are putting on display is a bipartisan matter, not a solo party one. Personally, I don't see a problem with it; the government had to know that by being dictatorial that people would rebel against it. Actually there's a small part of me that is a little heartbroken about it. Of all the things that the government would force us to hate, I wouldn't choose a more efficient lightbulb as a target. And yes, I mean that - "force us to hate" - tyranny breeds resentment. By banning one bulb, they made some people hate another lightbulb.

They simply do not know how to run our lives better than we can run our lives. They are not our bosses. We are their bosses. "You want to force me to use this? No. I hate this. I'll never use it."

Ultimately, energy saving lightbulbs are mainly a cause c?l?bre. I never thought I would see the day that environmentalists would become pro-mercury, but here it is. Sure, each bulb only carries trace amounts of mercury, but people are using(and throwing away) millions of those bulbs. Trace isn't so trace when trace is multiplied by the millions on top of millions.

Ah, but here's the catch: Who's paying for the electricity to power those old lightbulbs? It costs society money as a whole. and that's where the government has the right to get involved.

Hence the irony: As much as people dislike their sky high and growing electric bills, because some people with megaphones are paid off, they will oppose a relatively sane effort to actually do something about it, effectively taking a choice that takes money out of their own pockets.

I've long since come to the conclusion society is made up of morons. Looking at things through that prism, things make a lot more sense.

[b15hop]

The world will come to an energy crisis when they realise oil is not a infinite resource. Oil is merely a form of energy. Much like nuclear....

We are all our own masters or slaves depending how you look at it.

Energy consumption is greatest with HVAC and transport. Those two alone consume the most energy by far.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVAC

But one of the biggest burdens of all is human greed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrqmbIzmvcQ

It will take a cultural shift move a nation beyond greatness.

[bleubugs]

Funny that

It is interesting that nobody did point out what energy is in a discussion about energy... Let's first remember energy is an unit that measure change done to the world. Any change to the world require energy.

Second point is also a fact that we don't "produce" energy, but actually only consume it. Energy is free and you only pay human to access it. This lead to some simple equation for our life style :

Life style = (current human effort + past human effort) * energy * raw material

In this equation the only things that get paid is human. Earth and Sun don't have any use for money, they give raw material and energy for free. Only human try to give a price that only reflect short term value. This equation, for anyone who do optimization, will explain easily why we need more energy. As you pay human, the best things is to reduce it and use more energy to have the same result. In fact, all productivity gain are just a matter of consuming more energy (sure you can optimize things, but since the end of WWII statistic shows that progress go really much more slowly than our growth of energy use). This also means that our life style, what we call recession or economic growth is now directly related to how much energy we can produce. Now guess what is happening since 2005/2006... Nuclear is just not the question when we are talking about energy...

[freeman]

Paul-L
We humans are assholes, we have always been; since we "as a group", want our group to survive, that evolved onto communities, then onto cities, then into regions, then into countries, we are humans after all; we want the group we are tied to, to survive as long as we can.

Hi Paul, here's something quite interesting, published few minutes ago:

... Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
before addressing you directly and unambiguously clear in the last lines of this official Notice, I find it appropriate to include in the document some of my comprehensions of life, because it refers to the radical changes in my relationships not only with your parties, but also with the various much wider audience - that is to say, with all members of the so-called "society"...

Sovereign Freeman: Notice Of Bankruptcy Of The Republic Of Croatia

[b15hop]

It is interesting that nobody did point out what energy is in a discussion about energy... Let's first remember energy is an unit that measure change done to the world. Any change to the world require energy.

Second point is also a fact that we don't "produce" energy, but actually only consume it. Energy is free and you only pay human to access it. This lead to some simple equation for our life style :

Life style = (current human effort + past human effort) * energy * raw material

In this equation the only things that get paid is human. Earth and Sun don't have any use for money, they give raw material and energy for free. Only human try to give a price that only reflect short term value. This equation, for anyone who do optimization, will explain easily why we need more energy. As you pay human, the best things is to reduce it and use more energy to have the same result. In fact, all productivity gain are just a matter of consuming more energy (sure you can optimize things, but since the end of WWII statistic shows that progress go really much more slowly than our growth of energy use). This also means that our life style, what we call recession or economic growth is now directly related to how much energy we can produce. Now guess what is happening since 2005/2006... Nuclear is just not the question when we are talking about energy...

Actually I assumed first hand that energy was a generalisation and not a specific form of it. Even humans are in themselves a form of energy since we provide services that could in effect be done by machines.

[bridgman]

Some people have made up their minds and are not open to a rational discussion. Please educate yourself on the subject.

I'm sure it's coincidence, but a mass mailing just went out to everyone living in the vicinity of our nearby nuclear plants (including me) reminding us about the importance of maintaining an emergency kit including Potassium Iodide pills and of having an evacuation plan in the event of an emergency at one of the power plants. Even included a cardboard flashlight:

[phred14]

I'll just throw out something that hasn't been mentioned yet on this thread, "externalized costs".

I once said something about "intrinsic value" on another discussion thread, and was promptly castigated with the remark, "The only value anything has is the value we humans assign to it." If we humans were perfect at assigning value to things, that might be true, but I don't believe we are, not even me. There are innumerable examples of things that we didn't value, at some point in time, then later discovered something really nifty about that thing, that it was really valuable. The examples I can think of off the top of my head are the Pacific yew and the flue ash from copper refining. Once upon a time, the Pacific yew was just a bush - until it became a source of Taxol, useful against cancer. As for the flue ash from copper refining, once upon a time it was waste. Then we started finding nifty things like platinum and other rare metals in there. (Or was it the ash from refining silver, still what was once waste turned into a something valuable.)

In much current usage, "externalized costs" are really consuming something we haven't yet assigned a financial value to, yet. For instance, clean air, clean water, the Amazon rain forest, old-growth forest, etc, etc, etc. If we had some way of assigning a better financial value to those things once thought of as "free", and pushed those externalized costs back into the products we use, things might tilt around just a bit, and they might inject more sanity into our habits. I happen to think that in some way, at least partly due to externalized costs, transportation is badly under-valued. We transport things all over the place, willy-nilly, burning fossil fuel, putting exhause into the air, and covering land in order to do so. There might be a bit more local production of goods if transportation were properly valued. (or properly "expensed" might be what I mean.) We might also be less attracted to mere things.

As for overpopulation, personally I'd like to see birth control readily and universally available. I have kids myself, and I really wish that every child born was wanted and welcomed into the world.