# Are political echo chambers bad for society? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 15, 2015, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203 "2015-07-15T01:53:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/41 "2015-07-16T04:17:07Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > As do I, but I don’t think the SDMB is representative. > > To make up some numbers, suppose that 1% of conservatives research their sources whereas 5% of liberals do. Does that mean that liberals are 5 times better? No; it means that the teeming masses of both groups are almost entirely uninformed. As the NPR example shows, this is not as dire as you think. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > No, but the Huffington Post does (as well as a lot of other pseudoscience). That BTW is a reason why I do not use them as a source for science matters, it has some value as a political source. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I wouldn’t say that. I’d say that the news source is almost irrelevant if your policy is to verify the information and can ignore the editorializing. Fox and NPR cover the same basic events, but the former is likely to have put their spin on the event and screwed up some basic facts. This doesn’t matter if you go to the sources, though. NPR may be better, but neither one is really acceptable beyond a “this is something that happened in the world” level. > > Choosing a good news source is a decent first step, but by no means the last step. Not quite, it is not just spin but the news that they choose to tell their viewers is an important factor, there had been a few studies that shows that Fox news viewers are indeed more ignorant of many important issues. And so it goes for the issues the sources dwell on, one very good example for me was the Benghazi affair, Fox news reported the made up conspiracy day in and day out, while a source like MSNBC did not reporte much about it. As the mostly Republican congressional report on the issue told us, what MSNBC did was the right approach, there was nothing about that conspiracy. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/42 "2015-07-16T04:27:43Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Choosing a good news source is a decent first step, but by no means the last step. I didn’t say it was the only or last step. I said it was the most important. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/43 "2015-07-16T04:32:20Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Do they? Have they read the papers? Verified the credibility of the scientists? Or did they just believe that because it’s what they heard from their preferred news sources? The breadth of knowledge available to humans precludes people from becoming experts on the multitude of subjects they might hold an opinion on. It’s simply impossible. What we can do is become competent at evaluating the credibility of various sources. Deference to expertise is absolutely a choice and an intellectual skill. Some people look at subjects they know little about, and just say “all those pointy headed scientists are wrong, my gut says otherwise”, and that’s obviously a big gaping intellectual flaw. Some people say “Well, almost every person who has spent their lives studying this issue using the scientific method agrees with this position. It would be foolish of me to go against that based on a 15 minute googling of the issue” You’d classify the same groups as equally rigorous, equally valid, with one just happening to be right by coincidence. I call BS on that. > [@](#): > > That NPR is a better news source than Fox doesn’t prove that their audience is thinking any more critically. It does if NPR actually is a better news source, and they chose it for that reason. We aren’t assigned a preferred media outlet at birth. If people make better decisions about where to get their information, they are absolutely playing an active role in being more well informed. Incidentally, comparing Fox News to NPR as some sort of “two sides of the same coin” assertion is a very good example of the false balance I’ve been trying to address in this thread. NPR is a vastly superior source of information. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/44 "2015-07-16T04:39:11Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > As the NPR example shows, this is not as dire as you think. Being informed isn’t _just_ about the facts, any more than literacy is just about being able to read the letters. It might be a prerequisite, but not particularly far along the path to actual understanding. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > And so it goes for the issues the sources dwell on, one very good example for me was the Benghazi affair, Fox news reported the made up conspiracy day in and day out, while a source like MSNBC did not reporte much about it. As the mostly Republican congressional report on the issue told us, what MSNBC did was the right approach, there was nothing about that conspiracy. I’ll acknowledge one other bias present especially in TV news, which is that the amount of screen time spent on a subject is totally uncorrelated with its importance. Yeah, Fox spent a shit-ton of time on Benghazi, which was at best a very minor screwup. I think their reasons for doing so are obvious, but in the end was it really that much worse than spending weeks on the MH370 disappearance? Neither one served to inform their audience. And like I said, being informed isn’t just about factual information; it’s about having the background on that information and being able to make meaningful decisions based on it. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/45 "2015-07-16T04:45:45Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > NPR is a vastly superior source of information. Vastly superior? That’s why they had Kim Kardashian on, right? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/46 "2015-07-16T04:56:21Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > What we can do is become competent at evaluating the credibility of various sources. Yes. I think that very few people actually do this. This small group might well be massively biased to liberals, but it doesn’t speak to the majority. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > You’d classify the same groups as equally rigorous, equally valid, with one just happening to be right by coincidence. I call BS on that. Obviously, the actual experts came to their conclusions through valid means. That wasn’t coincidence. The rest of the population, who have probably never looked up the name of the guest on some radio show, or skimmed a scientific paper, or read a blog by practicing scientists, has at best just gotten lucky in that their preferred source happens to be reality-based. And I never said the two groups are equal. Just that the differences are concentrated in a small elite, and that the general masses have roughly equal lack of rigor. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > It does if NPR actually is a better news source, and they chose it for that reason. I disagree. Even if everything Rush Limbaugh said was the absolute truth, I wouldn’t listen to him since he’s an angry, paranoid blowhard. I’d rather listen to a source that I knew was filled with misinformation if Rush wasn’t on it. People choose their sources for all kinds of reasons, not all of them good ones. Sometimes it’s just because that’s what their parents listened to. As **Construct** said, political leanings are highly heritable. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > Incidentally, comparing Fox News to NPR as some sort of “two sides of the same coin” assertion is a very good example of the false balance I’ve been trying to address in this thread. NPR is a vastly superior source of information. If you believe that’s what I said, then you haven’t been reading my posts at all. At every point I have said that NPR is a better source than Fox. It’s just that neither is good enough to be truly informed on a subject. NPR may give you a farther head-start, but one should still not take it as gospel. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/47 "2015-07-16T04:56:47Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Being informed isn’t _just_ about the facts, any more than literacy is just about being able to read the letters. It might be a prerequisite, but not particularly far along the path to actual understanding. IMHO and based on experience and what I have seen happen to close relatives it is really a very important thing to choose the right sources of information by constantly checking how accurate they are. I agree with \*\*SenorBeef \*\*on this, we can not know everything, so we have to choose our sources of information wisely. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I’ll acknowledge one other bias present especially in TV news, which is that the amount of screen time spent on a subject is totally uncorrelated with its importance. Yeah, Fox spent a shit-ton of time on Benghazi, which was at best a very minor screwup. I think their reasons for doing so are obvious, but in the end was it really that much worse than spending weeks on the MH370 disappearance? Neither one served to inform their audience. MH370 does not affect the opinion of Americans on how to vote and to change public opinion, Benghazi does it for many. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > And like I said, being informed isn’t just about factual information; it’s about having the background on that information and being able to make meaningful decisions based on it. Yes, but the point stands, it is not as horrid a situation as you picture it once more reliable sources of information are used, in my case BTW I had my encounters with the pseudoscience of the Huffington post before and it was one of the reasons why I do not use them much. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/48 "2015-07-16T05:05:43Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > IMHO and based on experience and what I have seen happen to close relatives it is really a very important thing to choose the right sources of information by constantly checking how accurate they are. I agree about the constant checking. I just don’t agree that a large fraction of people do this on either “side”. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > MH370 does not affect the opinion of Americans on how to vote and to change public opinion, Benghazi does it for many. It could very well change their perception of airline safety. Airplane disasters get far more screen time than car crashes, even though the latter are far more dangerous. Even a fairly small number of people deciding “planes are unsafe; I’ll take the car instead” will add up to a large number of fatalities. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/49 "2015-07-16T11:19:02Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > And why is that? It’s certainly not because there’s a policy of banning people who have right wing viewpoints. > > It turns out that when there’s a left/right divide on an issue, the facts are often more in favor of the left. Climate change denialism doesn’t go well on this board. Is that because it’s a liberal echo chamber, or, because, you know, that’s reality? > > Places that have a culture of open, intellectual debate and a willingness to accept reality tend to skew left (by US standards) because US conservatism as a movement is very “create your own reality” > > That’s exactly why they form their own echo chambers, because their viewpoints cannot withstand scrutiny. The problem with your narrative is this place is full of group think, confirmation bias, and total non-acceptance of anything you not agree with. Take for example the recent series of news articles concerning the proposed claim of a coming mini ice age. I read on that from 3 different news sources. Ok. Interesting theory of two magnetic cycles within the sun and I had never heard that before. However this was news the GW advocates absolutely do not want to hear so what happens here in the Dope ? Well the author was criticized because she has a Russian first and last name. Gasp !!! certainly a Russian cannot be trusted on this. Next that she was not from a top tier University and Gasp !!! certainly that is a major issue. Therefore this theory is pure bullshit. Go back and look that is basically the talking points. What a reasonable person without an agenda would do is say this is an interesting theory and where is the peer review to see what others in the scientific community say on this. Not to be. It is shout out and shut down dissenting thoughts. ---
**Author:** ![HumbleThinker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5daacb/32.png) [@HumbleThinker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HumbleThinker)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/50 "2015-07-16T12:08:02Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > By ‘political echo chambers,’ I mean the tendency of conservatives and liberals to self-segregate socially, in such a way that conservatives only associate and converse with conservatives, and liberals only associate and converse with liberals. > This has several effects: It polarizes society more and more as conservatives get dragged further and further by their echo chambers to the right and liberals get dragged further and further by their echo chambers to the left. It also leads both sides to stereotype each other very negatively, since there isn’t that much interaction with people from the opposite political spectrum. > But most people’s response is or would be, “I already \*know \*what conservatives (or liberals) are like. It’s not that I haven’t interacted with them before. I \*have \*interacted with them before and they have no worthwhile ideas to offer. I don’t want to interact with them any more, I see no point in listening to their drivel.” > > So, is political self-segregation a good or bad thing for society? It gets worse than that. Google, for instance, can give you search results based on your past internet activity, thereby creating an echo chamber within the largest depository of information on the planet. This is why I recommend everyone to opt out of this feature in their Google settings. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/51 "2015-07-16T15:05:10Z")
> [@Construct](#): > > Expanding the Overton window almost certainly guarantees increasing the likelihood of catastrophically bad outcomes, like genocide. Especially given that we know ideological positions like communism and fascism are very likely lead to persecution and gulags, it is highly probable that other extreme political beliefs will lead to mass death. A policy of prudent avoidance would suggest treading slowly and cautiously when changing the course of society. Bear in mind that in American political discourse, slavery abolition, women’s suffrage, most of the New Deal programs, etc., etc., were far outside the Overton Window for a very long time. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/52 "2015-07-16T17:24:53Z")
> [@DinoR](#): > > I’d submit it’s bad even then. > > - Even starting from a hypothetical position of 100% accuracy, as situations change the scarcity of challenge and critical discussion inside the echo chamber to ensure positions adapt accurately. > - Confirmation bias tends to make it hard to assess rightness/wrongness once you enter that echo chamber. It skews the perception of those inside them towards a misplaced confidence that they are right. > - You can’t separate optimum policy/candidate positions from some axiomatic values and weighting of values. Two people can agree that both A and B are good things to pursue, and C is something to be avoided. When considering a policy change to increase A and B at the cost of some C, different weightings are enough to produce different “optimum” solutions. > - Given different values and weightings exist, there’s frequently a need to negotiate solutions to actually implement things. Echo chambers tend to reinforce the sense of we’re fully right and they are fully wrong. They also tend to reinforce less accurate representations of the other parties interests. Both of those things make negotiating problematic. It simply gets harder to find solutions that are better for both sides than no agreement. We can bypass possible good solutions in favor of "perfect"solutions that never get implemented. My math would be a little bit simpler. Given the hypothetical starting point of 100% accuracy, the echo chamber is more likely to remain at or close to 100% accuracy by using whatever internal methods it used to reach that point than introducing elements which are not 100% accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2015, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/53 "2015-07-16T20:02:23Z")
> [@davida03801](#): > > The problem with your narrative is this place is full of group think, confirmation bias, and total non-acceptance of anything you not agree with. > > Take for example the recent series of news articles concerning the proposed claim of a coming mini ice age. I read on that from 3 different news sources. Ok. Interesting theory of two magnetic cycles within the sun and I had never heard that before. However this was news the GW advocates absolutely do not want to hear so what happens here in the Dope ? > > Well the author was criticized because she has a Russian first and last name. Gasp !!! certainly a Russian cannot be trusted on this. Next that she was not from a top tier University and Gasp !!! certainly that is a major issue. Therefore this theory is pure bullshit. Go back and look that is basically the talking points. > > What a reasonable person without an agenda would do is say this is an interesting theory and where is the peer review to see what others in the scientific community say on this. > > Not to be. It is shout out and shut down dissenting thoughts. Not my impression, **The Bad Astronomer** (yes he is/was a poster at the SDMB) debunked what the Russian had claimed back in 2011, as a planetary scientist TBA (aka Phil Plait) he has indeed the expertese to report that in the past the Math Russian professor also did go for the canard of all the planets increasing their temperature, also a misunderstanding. What we got from the news was just more of the same misunderstandings that mainstream and denier media loves to report to their viewers. And well, the right wing echo chamber got you indeed really well. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/54 "2015-07-17T05:20:42Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > This is just an example of exactly the sort of false balance I was referring to in my posts. You’re beginning with the presumption that two disparate political groups are equally well-reasoned, well-intentioned, well-motivated, critical thinking, etc. And so any difference they perceive between each other is just their own partisanship biasing them towards seeing their own side in a positive light, and the other side in a negative light. It’s possible that my belief is a false balance but I think it’s born out by my experience. When people choose sides on a topic they obviously think they are correct. It makes them feel even better if they can talk themselves into believing that the other side is dumb, biased, or ignorant. It’s a form of cognitive bias. I think your bias is showing right here: > [@SenorBeef](#): > > This is ridiculous. People who believe in climate science are informed by climate science. They’re not listening to some left Rush Limbaugh (notice how there isn’t really one of those) who has made believing climate science one of their talking points out of fiat. There is no question that conservatives are wrong about AGW. However, there is no question that liberals are wrong about GMO and nuclear power. Both sides ignore the science when it is convenient. That you focus on AGW and not GMO/Nukes is evidence to me that you have some connection to a liberal echo chamber. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/55 "2015-07-17T11:23:52Z")
I agree with everyone here that groupthink is bad and that everyone does it equally. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/56 "2015-07-17T13:14:09Z")
@ **Dr. Strangelove** : The idea that being informed requires each person to be engaged in their own primary data collection, or even to do their own review of primary data sources, is so absurd that it hardly merits further consideration. If that were the standard, then ultimately nobody would be informed because the process of advancing knowledge would be so inefficient as to come to a grinding halt. Being informed in a workable efficient fashion means gathering information, evaluating the validity or utility of that information, and then evaluating the reliability of the method that you used to gather that information. People simply have to rely on secondary sources of information for humanity to succeed. Where we too often fail appears to be in the process of evaluating either the validity of the info or more fundamentally in reviewing the reliability of our methods. If you get information from a source and it turns out to be wrong, you must reconsider and ultimately discard that source. Your methods are not reliable. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/57 "2015-07-17T13:21:22Z")
@ **Construct** : It is awesome that you would choose gay marriage as an indictment of any sort of liberal echo chamber or liberal groupthink. Homosexuality, and gay marriage, have been social taboos; quite literally the product of nothing but group think. Evidence supporting prohibitions against them have been exclusively the product of echo chambers or supernatural sources (essentially gussied up group think). You’ve offered a firm defense of echo chamber reasoning, apparently completely ignorant of having done so. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/58 "2015-07-17T15:45:32Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > There is no question that conservatives are wrong about AGW. However, there is no question that liberals are wrong about GMO and nuclear power. Both sides ignore the science when it is convenient. That you focus on AGW and not GMO/Nukes is evidence to me that you have some connection to a liberal echo chamber. Funny, I consider myself a liberal and I support nuclear power and GMOs. Incidentally we had a few discussions about that before, what I found is that yes, there are a lot of people from the left that are against it, but what I found out is that there is also a huge percentage of people from the right that are also against them when the time to build the power plant or a GMO test field is set, in those cases NIMBY is what is prevailing, it is still bad IMHO. Going forward I found that the Obama administration and many democratic leaders do support nuclear power when used as a part of dealing with the control of our emissions, Republicans do not support those efforts and do prefer to toss out nuclear power together with renewable energy sources and better controls of our emissions. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/59 "2015-07-17T19:51:18Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Funny, I consider myself a liberal and I support nuclear power and GMOs. Yup, and there are conservatives on this board (e.g. XT, IIRC) that support AGW. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Incidentally we had a few discussions about that before, what I found is that yes, there are a lot of people from the left that are against it, but what I found out is that there is also a huge percentage of people from the right that are also against them when the time to build the power plant or a GMO test field is set, in those cases NIMBY is what is prevailing, it is still bad IMHO. I agree that NIMBY knows no political barriers; all the more reason we need to push it harder. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Going forward I found that the Obama administration and many democratic leaders do support nuclear power when used as a part of dealing with the control of our emissions, Republicans do not support those efforts and do prefer to toss out nuclear power together with renewable energy sources and better controls of our emissions. This is where I disagree with you. No recent politician has dealt a bigger blow to nuclear power than Obama when he shut down Yucca Mountain, a program the Bush strongly supported. _An Inconvenient Truth_ came out almost 10 years ago. If the left had gone all-in on nuclear power and worked with Republicans we’d likely have plants coming online right now, reducing carbon emissions with the side benefit of limiting fracking (another environmental concern) and lowering the influence of Middle East regimes. But no, the liberal echo chamber would rather point fingers at Republican recalcitrance on AGW and feel smug about how we “believe the science”. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2015, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203/60 "2015-07-17T20:33:43Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > This is where I disagree with you. No recent politician has dealt a bigger blow to nuclear power than Obama when he shut down Yucca Mountain, a program the Bush strongly supported. Again, that was for were the nuclear waste was supposed to end, IIRC in a previous discussions I pointed out that Arizona with their conservative senators and governors was looking into making the dump here in Arizona. (And I would support that BTW) At last report they are **still** [del]stalling[/del] looking. Freaking NIMBY. In the meantime the Obama administration has increased the funding for the still under construction nuclear power plants. (That fell into a lot of disrepute after a few disasters that many from the left and the right are aware of) > [@Deeg](#): > > _An Inconvenient Truth_ came out almost 10 years ago. If the left had gone all-in on nuclear power and worked with Republicans we’d likely have plants coming online right now, reducing carbon emissions with the side benefit of limiting fracking (another environmental concern) and lowering the influence of Middle East regimes. But no, the liberal echo chamber would rather point fingers at Republican recalcitrance on AGW and feel smug about how we “believe the science”. That is because I found that indeed it is the Republicans the ones that are not willing to vote for concerted efforts to control our emissions that do include nuclear power, BTW I have pointed at this bit of legislation several times in the past, that you ignore it is a clear demonstration of what the echo chamber is doing to you: > **[Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012 Introduced - OurEnergyPolicy](https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/clean-energy-standard-act-of-2012-introduced/)** > > Senate Energy & Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has introduced the Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012, which would require electric utilities to derive increasing percentages of their supply mix from low-CO2 sources. The bill would... > [@](#): > > Sources eligible under the legislation include: renewables, such as wind and solar, “qualified” renewable biomass and waste-to-energy, hydropower, natural gas, \*\*and nuclear. \*\*Facilities with CO2 capture and storage, and some combined heat and power facilities, are also eligible. The bill establishes a market-based credit trading scheme, within which utilities could purchase compliance credits from other utilities. > [@](#): > > **The Act was introduced with no Republican support.** Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the top Republican on the Energy & Natural Resources Committee has said that she will “only get behind such a standard if it replaces federal climate regulations.” [The Hill] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-political-echo-chambers-bad-for-society/725203.md?page=4)