Amtrak needs to start relocating facilities.

[tricia]

Agreed.  It's also axiomatic that the actual truth is more likely to be discovered by someone who is not an extremist.  

Let's try this from another angle: Actual truth is more likely to be discovered by someone who's looking for it in good faith, rather than seeking to deny the truth for financial benefit. 

Looking for truth somewhere in the middle between those who are seeking it, and those who seek to deny it, is a fool's errand. Framing the two camps as duelling "extremists" implies that their views have equal value (or lack thereof). 

 

[VTTrain]

Let's try this from another angle: Actual truth is more likely to be discovered by someone who's looking for it in good faith

Good faith and good science.  That is the only point I was trying to make.

Framing the two camps as duelling "extremists" implies that their views have equal value (or lack thereof). 

For the third time, I never said that.  I am begging you to go back and read what I actually wrote.  Your sentence (above) doesn't even make sense.  Everyone can't be an "extremist".  

Respectfully, I think you got overly defensive on this one.

 

[jis]

Depends on how you define middle. My intent was more to say that it would most likely not lie in the extremes. That does not mean it would be exactly in the middle. The issue you raise occurs only if you insist that it must be exactly near the middle. I at least do not believe that was my intended message.

Of course it is more likely to be predicted more accurately by someone who is not trying to find arguments in favor of a position using carefully selected observations while ignoring observations that do not fit their favorite story line.

The actual truth will be found equally by everyone when it actually happens irrespective of what they predicted. [emoji57]

 

[tricia]

I'm uncomfortable when "the extremes" are framed to include points of view that don't deserve to be part of the debate. Climate-change denial is fundamentally dishonest or delusional, and including it in the debate shifts "the middle." Which is exactly what the corporarate shills responsible for pushing it intend.

I've also become increasingly "defensive" about pointing out this sort of false equivalency when I see it happening, in part because of the response to what happened in Charlottesville, cited by Bob Dylan above. (Full disclosure: My husband probably would have been among the crowd protesting white supremacy in Charlottesville that day, if a schedule conflict hadn't nixed that.) To quote the late Solomon Burke: If we don't say it's wrong, that says it's right.

 

[VTTrain]

I've also become increasingly "defensive" about pointing out this sort of false equivalency when I see it happening

It's fine to point out a false equivalency when it actually happens.  In this case, you "saw" something happen that wasn't actually happening.

I'm on your side on this issue - so please take a deep breath and don't assume the worst.

 

[Bob Dylan]

My Last word on this thread:

This Train has left the Station and if you're not already  aboard you're not gonna get there!

It's never good to be on the wrong side of History!

 

[Devil's Advocate]

But if we really want to reduce our CO2 emissions, nuclear power is the best form of base load out there. Nuclear power plants cost so much in part due to the lawfare used to try to keep them from opening. Waste disposal is a red herring. A single waste disposal site would be able to handle any radioactive waste generated but again, the anti-nuke groups have made it nearly impossible to achieve. If we really want to reduce our CO2 emissions, a strong and growing nuclear power industry would be a huge help. Natural gas would be cheaper, but it is still going to emit a lot of CO2. Renewables are great, but you really need a solid base load energy source.

Nuclear power baseload claims are substantially weakened by the extended downtime periods required for refueling and maintenance.  Which specific laws are you claiming account for today's nuclear power plant construction costs?  Nuclear waste disposal is a million year problem with no proven commercial scale solution.  Conventional hydro, wave action, geothermal, offshore wind, and half-duty solar thermal will generally have baseload performance similar or equivalent to nuclear over the long haul.  Nuclear power has a major and unforgiving obstacle, but it's not government regulation or environmental activism so much as the high (and growing) financial cost and poor investment returns.  Blind devotion to nuclear power has laid waste to businesses as large and powerful as Westinghouse and Toshiba.

A small percentage of anthropogenic climate change believers are extremists.  They are the ones who are known for patently absurd claims and fear mongering.  So, it is true, therefore, that you have extremists on both sides of the issue. The extremists on the "believer" side, when their absurd predictions and claims don't come true, give ammunition to the deniers, so this is not a trivial matter.

Who are these people, what are there names and credentials, and what wild predictions did they make that were later proven to be demonstrably untrue?  I think the main difference between extremist climate deniers and climate exaggerators is that one group represents the fringe believers while the other represents the core of the movement.

 

[Ryan]

What I actually said was that you have "extremists on both sides of the issue."  This was true when I said it, and it is true now.

Yet you refuse to back that up with any sort of fact, and just wander away with a "agree to disagree" escape.  You're doing a pretty terrible job of not getting into a debate on the topic.

 

[jebr]

Moderator note:

The thread has gone severely off-topic in terms of relevance to Amtrak, and as such has been locked. Discussion about climate change in general can happen in The Lounge, though our standard rules about political discourse still apply to threads in the lounge.