Egg-zactly. Looks like a cognitive defect to me.
Conservatives are not against renewable energy. Although they may being forced to pay extra for it. Why do liberals prefer coal plants over nuclear plants?
Nonsense. Even setting aside the problem of global climate change, the death toll from fossil fuels (both short-term extraction and long-term pollution effects) would make nuclear a clear winner even if there were a Chernobyl-level clusterfuck every decade or so (which is itself impossible because it requires bad design and operation on a level would be considered criminal negligence in pretty much any modern civilized nation).
You know that they don’t. Nuclear is the opposite of whatever they want to feel warm and self-satisfied about, so they NIMBY it in favor of non-existent but warm fuzzy feeling unicorn power, whereupon the adults responsible for making sure that the lights go on when the libs get up to brew their fair trade coffee shrug resignedly and say – “So, I guess we’re going to have to go with coal then.” (Bright lining – many coal plants are convertible to nat gas).
I know, the effect’s the same as choosing coal, but in their minds it’s completely different – it’s all down to evil conservatives refusing to “just” use rainbow pixie power.
Simple cognitive dissonance. It’s the ever-popular “Libertarian when we’re talking about me, Socialist when we’re talking about you” conservative mindset. Anyone who thinks that fossil fuels aren’t incredibly subsidized is just writing off those costs as ‘the price of doing business’. At the very least, we spend billions on our military- largely in the middle east and an unknown (possibly unknowable) amount will be paid in the future due to climate change. If people had to pay some estimate of these costs at the gas pump (instead of at tax time) they would feel the true cost of non-renewable energy and the search for alternatives would seem much more prudent and reasonable.
The biggest mistake I think most conservatives make is by taking this ‘market solutions’ approach. There is no doubt that smart people can fix challenging problems, but thinking that right when the shit hits the fan that the market will produce the ‘MagikFuel’ for only 99 cents a gallon is crazy. It’s no different than racking up a 40,000 dollar credit card bill on a bender to Vegas and justifying it with the idea that ‘People win 50,000 jackpots there every week- no reason it won’t be me!’ and claiming you’ll head home money ahead. Without work now to find out what works, what will work and what we should discard, there is no guarantee that we won’t have the same problem in 150 years, only with Brazil or China as the new middle east. Part of finding out what we can use requires real world R&D- large scale test projects, pure research and realistic analysis.
I definitely believe in peak oil, but I don’t think there will ever be a day when I just wake up and the fuel pumps are permanently dry. But it’s only going to become more difficult and expensive to produce. Why shouldn’t we start working on a different solution now? Will we have to wait until gas is 15 dollars a gallon before conservatives let the government work on a solution? I see one of the main jobs of government to be watching for long term problems on the horizon and start working on solutions before they get here. If we’re just going to wait until the shit hits the fan and react in a panic, we could do that by ourselves. As someone said before, solutions reached in the midst of a crisis usually tend to be less than ideal.
Well, you guys keep on using that wide brush and continue to sound convincing… Not!
Clearly you have not paid attention to what most leftists or centrists in this thread think about the issue.
Add to that the reality that simple logic can tell you that liberals are not the main reason why nuclear has not seen much progress in the USA, it continues to be our old non-political friend NIMBY.
When one checks the polls, liberals barely manage to show up as being just 1/3 of the population (and a good chunk are not really against nuclear, keep that in mind), recent polls did show an increase of support of nuclear up to 2/3 of the population, still when one checks the local opposition levels to setting a nuclear plant, the support for nuclear power plants in their neighborhood drops to 43%.
It is impossible for the liberals to be all in opposition to Nuclear (less likely among the scientifically or ecologically minded) and for them to be the reason to get that drop in local support, whereas you do not like to face it, there is a good chunk of conservatives and independents that are “eco freaks” or ignorant when resorting to NIMBY
As a conservative I was for renewable energy…before I found out that Der Trihs and Foolsguinea are for it. Now I am absolutely opposed to the idea. 
Near as I can tell, opposition to nuclear power comes from both sides of the aisle: On the left, from misguided amateur ecologists, and on the right, from fear of terrorism. Which is a shame, since neither is anywhere near the threat it’s made out to be.
Wind and solar are everywhere and therefore the powers that be cannot own and control and monopolize it as easily. Electrical power is highly profitable if you have a monopoly and the laws let you exploit that monopoly. Not so much if some solar cells on your roof meet your needs.
The market is going to correct for this soon. More people will be investing in solar and wind because the investments are smaller and the centralized fossil/nuke price will continue to rise.
The multiple meltdowns in Japan that are now occurring would suggest that those on the left opposing nuclear power were not misguided. If multiple meltdowns are not accepted to falsify the assumptions in favor of nuclear power, then those assumptions are not based on science, but on hubris.
There haven’t been any meltdowns.
Even if there were meltdowns, they would not in and of themselves falsify the science-based assumptions in favor of nuclear power (i.e. if global climate change is indeed as serious as science indicates that it might be, a few nuclear meltdowns are insufficient to change the conclusion that nuclear power is the best alternative among those realistically available for the next few decades).
No, they’re just suggesting that anything humans make is going to be seriously screwed up by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake. I mean, it’s not like anything else in Japan is faring any better.
Your unsupported statement is telling people information that is just not true. There are at least three meltdowns. I wish there had been no meltdowns, but that does not square with the facts as reported.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110315/sc_ac/8068276_japans_unique_nuclear_meltdown_challenge
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_nuclear_crisis
http://www.c-dh.net/articles/2011/03/15/top_stories/05japanmeltdown.txt
There has been at least one meltdown, several more are likely to follow. Radiation levels and precautions being taken suggest that it is a lot worse than official reports are admitting. There have been several explosions (not fission explosions) from which we can infer that the situation is far from under control.
It falsifies all the science based assumptions that this technology is safe and not subject to meltdowns. These assurances were made to the public prior to construction and they turned out to be falsified by real world experience. The constant assurances that the pro-nuclear people make that such things are not possible with the design they happen to be hawking at the time are not believable because meltdowns occur. It is possible because it happens. A nuclear pile by its very nature gets very hot. A reactor by its very nature only controls that reaction while it is working according to plan. An uncontrolled reactor is going to melt down. The only possible exception I’ve seen to this is a pebble bed reactor, which are not profitable enough to run and they too can have problems.
Cite? AFAIK no one seriously said before that there were no risks.
Everything else that is happening that is bad in Japan is within the experience of people who are suffering to deal with it. This is not. It is fundamentally cruel to subject people to a danger that they do not understand how to deal with its consequences. Millions of people don’t know how their cancer rates are going to be affected, just that they are. They all know how to dig through rubble. For the profit of a few the consequences of failure are now being visited on millions.
It is not like mega quakes in Japan are a surprise. They are a certainty. What you are admitting here is that there was no way to prevent these plants from being screwed up by such a large quake. Well, they knew that then, and there is proof of it now. Clearly there were not enough working safety systems with redundancies. These losses are not acceptable. And when I say they are not acceptable, I am saying that all nuclear plants along the Pacific Ring of Fire should be shut down unless they can withstand a minimum 9.5 quake which is the largest recorded to date on the Ring of Fire in 1960 in Chile. And it is by no means certain that larger quakes won’t happen.
If a windmill or solar panel falls and kills someone, the damage is of a kind that typical citizens understand and can accept. This is just not acceptable.
Fortunately the citizens of the US fully understand now that the promises that Chernobyl was just bad Soviet design and US design could never do this. These are GE designed reactors.
There will never be another US nuke plant made for civilian usage. That includes possibly safe designs such as a pebble bed. That is because the typical citizen sees fully now that the people assuring that meltdowns can’t happen are mistaken and aren’t even smart enough to see that they are mistaken.
“Could”, “maybe” and “probably” don’t make a meltdown.
Many have acknowledged that also (except the meltdown, you still need a better source that one talking about likely scenarios that have still not taken place), and you seem to have trouble noticing that doing precautionary measures does not mean that the worst is happening. AFAIK it is still not under control, but not at the danger levels that the Nuclear Overreactors are making it to be. The latest reports I saw mention that the radiation levels are dropping, not increasing.
This is a thread made for the wide brush. Conservatives do this, liberals do that.
Once again, that is just a colossal straw man.