Would you care for some tuna then?
On 10/25/2013 06:08 PM, authfri...@yahoo.com wrote:
*Bhairitu wrote:*
> Of course the corporate press (Bloomberg News) is going to say
that! Born yesterday? :-D
*Gone blind? I listed several others (including Scientific American)
and noted that there were many more (and not just from the "corporate
press").*
*
*
*The thing is, Bhairitu, the more experts' opinions on this that you
read, the more you have to expand your conspiracy to account for the
fact that so many of them agree. And the more you have to extend
credibility to nonexperts, such as the right-wing former lawyer and
evangelical Christian novelist who wrote the post poor Share puts so
much stock in, and whose knowledgeable readers tore to shreds (see my
other post with the negative comments--you won't read it, because,
like Share, you much prefer to wallow in bad news, whether the news
holds up to examination or not).*
*
*
*It isn't that there's a perfect consensus by any means. But there is
very strong disagreement among qualified scientists about how much
radiation is dangerous to human health. And there's a
/tremendous/ amount of ignorance among laypeople about what
constitutes a significant rise in radioactivity. I'm just as ignorant
as most laypeople, but at least I have the smarts to know I'm ignorant
and to seek other opinions.*
*
*
*For instance, from the comments from the blog in my other post on one
of the "28 signs":*
"...The researchers looked at the isotopes found in the bluefin tuna
and found that the 'naturally occurring' isotopes were present in
amounts that were orders of magnitude larger than the amounts
traceable to the Fukushima accident."
IOW, either the study didn't say what the blogger thought it said, or
he knew it didn't say what he wanted /readers/ to think it said. And
that isn't even an /opinion/, it's a scientific fact.
The commenters picked up on a whole bunch of these misleading (or
deliberately false) conclusions. Did it even occur to Share to
/wonder/ whether there might be any reason to question them? It did
not. And it wouldn't to you either.
On 10/25/2013 02:21 PM, authfriend@... <mailto:authfriend@...> wrote:
Absolutely hilarious, from one perspective. From another, sad and
pathetic, to spend one's precious time and energy ignorantly worrying
about wildly exaggerated threats to the "whole planet" when there are
so many real threats to its welfare to which not enough attention is
being paid.
Share wrote:
> Anyone who doesn't think that the whole planet is being adversely
affected by radiation from
> Fukushima are IMO in denial. Better to face it without fear and
figure out how to handle it.
Better to stop denying one's ignorance, and figure out how to handle
that.
Here's a start, from an article in Bloomberg News. (Share won't read
any of this, because she doesn't want to have to give up her Prophet
of Doom role; it makes her feel, you know, Important.)
----------
Radiation Threat
And what of the lasting threat from radiation? Remarkably, outside
the immediate area of Fukushima, this is hardly a problem at all.
Although the crippled nuclear reactors themselves still pose a
danger, no one, including personnel who worked in the buildings, died
from radiation exposure. Most experts agree that future health risks
from the released radiation, notably radioactive iodine-131 and
cesiums-134 and - 137, are extremely small and likely to be undetectable.
Even considering the upper boundary of estimated effects, there is
unlikely to be any detectable increase in cancers in Japan, Asia or
the world except close to the facility, according to a World Health
Organization report. There will almost certainly be no increase in
birth defects or genetic abnormalities from radiation.
Even in the most contaminated areas, any increase in cancer risk will
be small. For example, a male exposed at age 1 has his lifetime
cancer risk increase from 43 percent to 44 percent. Those exposed at
10 or 20 face even smaller increases in risk -- similar to what comes
from having a whole-body computer tomography scan or living for 12 to
25 years in Denver amid background radiation in the Rocky Mountains.
(There is no discernible difference in the cancer rates between
people who live in Denver and those in Los Angeles or New York.)
Rather than stand as a warning of the radiation danger posed by
nuclear power, in other words, Fukushima has become a reminder that
uninformed fears aren’t the same as actual risks.
Why are the anticipated risks from Japan’s nuclear accident so small?
Perhaps the most important reason is that about 80 percent of the
radiation released was blown into the ocean. Radioactive
contamination of the sea sounds dreadful, but because oceans
naturally contain large amounts of radioactive materials, the net
increase in oceanic radioactivity is minuscule.
----------
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/fukushima-radiation-proves-less-deadly-than-feared.html
It turns out, by the way, that the worst health effects from
Fukushima will be psychosocial rather than physical--high percentages
of depression and anxiety among the Japanese, especially those who
lived close to the nuclear plants.
Also see:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57571880/cancer-risk-from-fukushima-nuclear-plant-disaster-quite-small-says-world-health-organization/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/japans-nuclear-meltdown/fukushima-radiation-estimate-doubles-but-cancer-risk-lower-than-expected/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
And many others.
Yes, there are serious threats to the ocean environment and its
critters in the area of Fukushima--but not to the "whole planet." And
not to humans.
Here's another article of interest:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=radioactive-water-leaks-from-fukushima
"The overall contamination of ocean life by the Fukushima meltdown
still remains very low compared with the effects of naturally
occurring radioactivity and leftover contamination from U.S. and
Soviet nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s. [Marine biologist
Nicholas] Fisher said he’d be 'shocked' if the ongoing leaks of
contaminated water had a significant impact on the ocean ecosystems."
And one more, this one about Chernobyl:
http://today.ttu.edu/2011/04/25-years-later-amazing-adaptation-in-chernobyl
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>,
<fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com>
<mailto:fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Anyone who doesn't think that the whole planet is being adversely
affected by radiation from Fukushima are IMO in denial. Better to
face it without fear and figure out how to handle it.
