I was going for “Chalkboard Monitor”, myself.
I didn’t, no. Cite?
My point being that your appeal to the authority of his being a chemist and “putting his reputation behind his estimates” in comparison to pseudonymonous Una and Cecil providing cites is stupid. No matter how accomplished he was otherwise in his career (and he actually did get an MD as well as his Chemistry degree) he was an idiot extremist when it came to radiation risks. And he was demonstrably wrong with the specific claim under discussion; that much the actual evidence does show … conclusively. Calling his estimates bogus is not “embarrassing” - it is accurate, but quoting them as having some value because he was a chemist who put “his reputation behind” them when the evidence that they are wrong had already been offered to you must be very embarrassing indeed.
I never once said that your chemist was ignorant or a coward. In fact I didn’t call anyone an anonymous coward on anything. Unlike yourself, who apparently is going to be allowed to refer to me and my posts as anonymous, cowardly, and ignorant.
“Side-stepping”…yeah, if someone doesn’t in their immediate next post address everything a clearly hostile person on a message board says, they’re “side-stepping.” And no, despite your attempt to rephrase things in a manner which suits you, I called the “cite” bogus. It consisted of 3 lines on some website called “opednews” I never heard of before with no link or bibliography to any technical paper, compiled by some lady in India I never heard of before in my life who I can find no track record of being any sort of energy expert.
I logged into the University - where I teach - and tried to find papers by John Goffman, Chemist Extraordinaire, since you were unwilling to do any legwork at all to support your prize pig. I find a paper he wrote called “Beware the Data Diddlers” where he accuses a database meant to track Chernobyl illnesses as being subject to a conflict of interest, because “Nearly all radiation research is sponsored by governments that fiercely defend and promote nuclear energy. I believe that they recognize their goals are not aided if the public comes to believe that radiation is harmful – even at low doses, and even if slowly delivered.” In fact, Gofman appears to have been a rabid anti-nuclear activist since the 1970’s and his political bias is certainly showing. I can’t however find the technical paper where he develops his “475,000 dead” claim - the only source I can find for it is a note that it’s in the forward of a book titled “Chernobyl: The forbidden truth”, and is not a peer-reviewed and published study that he did. It may appear in “Chernobyl accident: radiation consequences for this and future generations” but that work seems to be unavailable, even for my for-pay sources.
So since I’ve done some of your legwork for you and not been able to find the root of the claim you’re so enamoured with, I expect in your next post to be posting the link to the technical paper, or an attributed quote from it along with a bibliography so I can get it.
And he predicted 475,000 deaths - where are the body bags? Thus far it looks like he’s only off by a factor of 10,000 or so. It’s been 23 years, surely more than enough time for some major uptick in deaths to start showing…where is it?
I did find many people quoting Gofman right along with contemporaries, such as Shcherbak who says 32,000 deaths (Scientific American, April 1996). Turns out, after I got the paper, this oft-cited guy actually made an offhand comment about Greenpeace estimating 32,000 deaths, he didn’t do any research himself to come to that conclusion. Or maybe Campbell who says 125,000 (“Chernobyl’s Legacy to Science”, Nature 380). But wait - what Campbell really said, was this: “Few Western scientists are prepared to accept at face value claims made earlier this month by Ukrainian health officials that 125,000 people have already died as a result of the accident.” Huh.
Seems to me that relying on quotes from third-party websites and blogs isn’t a winning strategy towards the truth.
And no, I have no idea if $200 billion is even enough. It could be more. The whole issue of “cost” that I addressed was dealing with another person in here who was sloppily posting and deliberately baiting me.
I didn’t see your link to a “scientific report with a scientific margin of error from a peer reviewed journal.” You linked to some website called “opednews” I never heard of in my life.
So, here’s the rundown so far…I link to the IAEA and WHO, and you wave your hand and dismiss those cites cavalierly as being “political bodies” (really? On the SDMB, we don’t think the freaking International Atomic Energy Agency holds any water? Really?), and hold forth a couple of sentences on a site called “opednews” as trumping that, and refuse to supply a single other cite to a peer-reviewed technical paper while doing all this. You further continue to refer to a poster on the SDMB in Great Debates and her posts and being cowardly and ignorant, and if said poster is tired of being insulted and having some pretty good cites waved away like magic, then that’s deceptive behavior.
Again, I ask, why post here at all?
Una, here are some reprinted writings of Gofman’s that include his 475,000 predicted dead claim and his methods - and why they are better than anyone else’s methods - and why everyone else is part of the cover-up - and why the data that shows he was wrong is not to be believed as it is part of the conspiracy. Apparently his original “paper” (quoted widely) was: Gofman, John W., Sept. 9, 1986. “Assessing Chernobyl’s Cancer Consequences: Application of Four `Laws’ of Radiation Carcinogenesis,” presentation as a panelist at the Symposium on Low-Level Radiation, 192nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, held in Anaheim, California.
Enjoy.
But realize that since you admittedly work in the power industry you are part of the cover-up. Probably you’ve had you brain wiped of any facts by some special amnesia rays. Not me, I’ve got my tinfoil on.
But we better believe Gofman. He was a chemist! And put his reputation on the line!
Ooops. I forgot. Some here can’t tell.
:rolleyes:
This is an example of a bare assertion fallacy. The assumption that such an incident can’t occur at a US plant because it is built in the United States is without basis. There have, in fact, been a number of significant nuclear incidents in nuclear reactors in the United States and Canada, and in other Western nations with comparable nuclear power safety regulations.
One issue that has been largely neglected so far is the remediation and disposal of nuclear waste. While fuel elements can be vitrified and combustible low level waste can be incinerated and filtered, the biggest problem is actually with the caustic solvents and reactants used to carry and chemically separate nuclear material during the fuel processing and enrichment process. The liquid waste is particularly problematic as it can leak from vessels into groundwater resulting in long-term contamination, and transportation in casks is risky as an accident during transport could result in a leak that could contaminate any area between the processing facility and permanent storage.
The risks of power generation from nuclear fission can be managed, but not by sticking one’s head into the ground or insisting that there are no risks. There is large costs and hazards involved in the total ore to power production cycle that don’t exist with coal and are much smaller with oil. On the other hand, as Sam Stone lucidly explains, while “clean” energy from the environment can fulfill a portion of energy needs it simply can’t provide for all existing, much less projected, energy demands with the extant and extrapolated technology, and will have significant impacts itself that are often not well appreciated. Until such technology improves or we come up with another way of practical energy production (such as nuclear fusion, which will likely bring new problems) we will have to rely upon nuclear power to provide some percentage of total energy needs. The cost and impact of this has to be realistically weighed against risks to the public and overall lifecycle cost versus other energy production methods.
Stranger
Anonymous Coward is what they call posters over at Slashdot who decline to post by their own names or a made up name.
So now Una is not just a scientist, she works in the power industry? Wow. Let me guess, coal? That doesn’t disqualify her, nor does it make her part of a cover up, but is she a nuclear scientist?
Yeah, and stupid asshole or worse is what they call people who don’t know what the fuck they are talking about and attempt to insult people who we respect over in The Pit. What of it? If we were in the Pit I’d call someone doing that that or worse but we are not, so I won’t, and we also are not on Slashdot. So Slashdot etiquette don’t matter none do it?
What?
She always was a person who worked in this industry, and is rather expert on this subject. This isn’t like a sudden, stunning revelation. We are lucky to have her on this board. Something that can’t be said about all of the posters who are giving us the pearls of their dubious wisdom in this thread.
-XT
So you are saying she is a nuclear scientist? I call bullshit. If you are saying she works in the power industry, I’ll buy that. But not nuclear. She doesn’t seem to know more about nuclear reactions or radiation effects and clean up costs than any other poster. She admits to $50 billion in Hanford clean up costs, then dodges that Chernobyl might be 4 times as much. Utterly silent on the subject. You’ve appealed to her credentials without listing them, and when her own citation says it is impossibly to reliably estimate.
I’ll let her defend herself. IIRC she is a consultant in the power industry and has specific expertise on this subject. She is not, afaik, a nuclear scientist…nor is it necessary that she is one for the purposes of this particular thread. You own expertise, IIRC, is as a lawyer or in the legal field, no?
As for Chernobyl, I don’t think even a ball park estimate is possible…though I’m HIGHLY skeptical that the cost of cleanup would be in excess of $200 billion dollars (presumably US dollars, not Rubles). To me it’s pretty much a moot point, since Chernobyl is a worst case scenario…really, a perfect storm of fucked-up-ed-ness that is unlikely in the extreme to happen again, even in Russia where such reactor designs were common.
Even if such were the case though, the impact from Global Warming far outweighs the costs and impact to something even as bad as Chernobyl…it’s the difference between a purely local ecological disaster and one measured on a global scale.
-XT
Just because most of the world, apparently including you, have no sense of humor about themselves doesn’t mean I don’t. I’ve been ribbing everyone posting under a pseudonym, myself included, if not first. If you couldn’t pick up on that, that is too bad. I was letting everyone know where it comes from by referring to Slashdot. I’ve attempted to insult no one in this thread or forum. Unlike you, who feel free to call me an asshole. It’s a violation of forum rules, but since you are the old timer and I’m not even here a year, I’ll get the warning and you won’t. The fact is that Una (who is named after a fictional spy/assassin/rape victim in case you didn’t know) has been appealing to authority from the first time she posted when that authority discloses that it is impossible to reliably estimate and then does so anyway without disclosing the data on which it is based. Now that is no different than my sources. The fact that Una is in the power industry does not mean she knows squat about nuclear effects. When Qadgop posts on medical issues he explains why the medicine works that way. Una asserts, and so do her sources. Bricker posts his legal references when he states what the law is (usually).
Appeal to authority is a formal fallacy that is most fallacious when it is outside the area of expertise of the authority and still fallacious when the work is not shown. The assertions in this thread that nuclear is safe are conclusively proven false by Hanford, Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The assertions that these things weren’t bad at all, or not as bad as claimed are opinion that have been utterly unsupported here. We are touted the Pebble Bed reactor, but nobody mentions the very first test model, which was supposed to be unscrewupable jammed. We’ve been told a thousand times that nuclear is safe and reliable. But it turns out the hippy obstructionists always have incidents varying from alarming to disastrous to point to to show that the industry isn’t using the same meanings of English words as the rest of us when they say safe and reliable. Unfortunately, when vast amounts of heat are generated using nuclear fission the laws of thermodynamics still tend towards entropy. Imagine that.
Yes, I’m a lawyer, which gives me no professional expertise in this thread. However, as I’ve noted in this thread, I have experience of investing my whole life in energy issues and following them. That isn’t authority that should be given any weight unless the links I post to and the logic I use support those positions. You think that they should not. Let’s take the $200 billion claim. Una put forward links referring to Hanford clean up as $50 billion. Now I’m not familiar with Hanford except to know that it was where a lot of early bomb “fuel” was refined and I’ve heard that it spread to groundwater, etc. Nobody has come in and said (with citations) that those figures are all wrong and there really isn’t a problem. Hanford didn’t even go bad. There is no geographically enormous exclusion zone. Chernobyl has been estimated to have caused $200 billion by a chemist that looked into it. That is no worse (or presumably better) than the International report that can’t estimate but estimates that it is only going to total 4,000 deaths. This for a leak that was measured all over Europe. A nuclear accident that was known to the west to be a nuclear reactor accident not by announcement but because stations all over Europe were picking up the fallout. Only 4,000? On what basis over the lifetimes of those exposed do they make this assumptions? None. None. Where is the critical analysis? We have people in this thread saying that one Chernobyl a year would be acceptable. No, it would not be.
In addition to deliberately insulting a fellow member of the SDMB in Great Debates, you have moved on to making false accusations and posting false information, which can be proven by looking upthread where I said this:
(emphasis added)
In other words, if you could get over your schtick of insulting people in GD for disagreeing with you, you might notice that I was agreeing with you that the cost to clean up Chernobyl would be profound and could exceed the estimates of your single pseudo-cite.
I’d ask why it appears you decided to post something false which was easily true, but…well, I guess I don’t care.
Thank you for the link, DSeid; so far I see nothing that trumps those slackjawed yokels at the IAEA. 
If by Me you mean Una than I did not see that. So you agree that it may not be enough. I retract that. And I did not intend to insult any member in Great Debates, I think you are misunderstanding me. I think appeal to your authority is a logical fallacy, that is not an insult. I respect the references and insight you offer. I don’t think that nuclear is a financially viable or physically safe option and perhaps we disagree on that. The only one calling people asshole is DSeid. It seems we have agreement that $200 billion may be reasonable for Chernobyl or it may even be more? Is there anyone still posting in this thread that thinks that Chernobyl is a risk that is reasonable to take?
I do.
We have how many BILLION people on this planet?
A Chernobyl every few decades is certainly affordable planet wide. A dollar or two per person per year aint going take us under. Though global warming might…
And there earlier were people saying that one a year was acceptable. If by few decades you mean every 40 years, if we could be assured that was the extent of the damage and only one for 1000 additional plants, I’d say it is a high price, but maybe worth considering. But it is rather an expensive price when wind, solar and tidal accidents will have much more predictable consequences.
Second Stone thing is the only appeal to authority here was your stating that Gofman should be believed over cites given because Gofman was “a chemist who was putting his reputation on the line”. And who had predicted a magnitude of deaths that clearly was wrong by many orders of magnitude.
As to misreading the cite, well that would be you doing that. They would from their modeling expect a few thousand excess deaths but see no evidence of any increase at all. They explain that the epidemiologic data available may miss a few thousand excess deaths, that it may not be sensitive enough to pick that sort of number up reliably and with precision. But it would not miss hundreds of thousands as predicted by Gofman.
As to safety - let’s take this question of we mean by these English words when we say “safe and reliable” seriously. You are a lawyer allegedly, so you know the importance of clear definitions.
If by safety you mean no risk of any harm ever then no it is not “safe” - nor is walking down the street or even installing a solar panel by that definition. So probably that is not a good definition to use. Safer than coal? By orders of magnitude? Safer than heating your house with a wood burning stove? Yes. Safer than driving a car? Yes. By any realistic definition the data we have shows that nuclear is safe and getting safer. It will be and should be part of our energy future, even if I believe its place will and should be limited. Regulated and monitored. Tested well. And not underwritten or subsidized other than by pricing the carbon that it does not emit.
And Second, for the sake of precision, what with your being an alleged lawyer and all, I called no one here an asshole. I stated a hypothetical which illustrated why quoting ettiquite of another board was immaterial to the rules against calling someone a name here. What I actually think of certain posters is also immaterial to the matter.
You pretty clearly danced around calling me an asshole. You used the word and insinuated that it applied to me. Your denial is pathetic. Your denial, rather than a retraction or apology, says a lot about how you treat people. Confirming how I’ve seen you treat people in other threads, so it isn’t a one-off.