Marc de Piolenc wrote: >Keith wrote: > >"So global warming's a plot, GMOs are good for you, and now nukes are >cleaner than Kleenex? They just had a bad press? And as with the >other two, no references, no citations, just opinion, unsupported, no >visible foundation (same as bubbles, which soon burst). It's not a >very effective way of persuading people. But I suppose those that >want to believe it will." > >You could start where I did - Petr Beckman's The Health Hazards of NOT >Going Nuclear, which was more or less forced down my throat by a friend >who was getting a little tired of my ill-informed anti-nuclear rants. It >contains further references. I don't think it's in print, but there >might be used copies available. I think I've given mine away.
First, Marc, why don't you provide full refs when you want someone to refer to them? People are busy, you can't expect them to go searching around for the basis for your arguments. Anyway. Fortunately I don't have to "start", but if I did that would not be a good place to do it. You refer me to an out-of-print book that you've lost, and you don't give the publication date. I did do a search for your ref, and found some other stuff with it. Here's your ref: "The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear", Petr Beckman, The Golem Press, 1976. No wonder you don't give the date. And not surprising it's out of print. You really need more modern references for this, to work done since the end of the Cold War. As Todd said: "Going back to 1991, results from long term (multi-year) studies on the effects of low dose radiation started to pop up left and right. Some were performed by private institutions. Others were funded by the US Department of Energy. The end conclusions were that decades old concerns were confirmed by the increased percentages of cancers and birth abnormalities found within the study areas." Etc. Beckman's book is still sometimes referred to by the pro-nuke establishment and its apologists but not it seems by anyone else, that I could see. Beckman worked at the University of Colorado. He used to produce a monthly newsletter there, Access to Energy, in which he kept ranting about the "fascism of the left" and that the planet could take care of itself and we'd do just fine if we got the government and environmentalists off our backs and built lots of nuclear reactors. He's also on record as trying to debunk Einstein's theory of relativity. His work is also sometimes used by other apologists, for example, by apologists for industrial pollution, in articles such as one called "How clean is clean? 'Pollution' controls are an expensive neurosis", [note the quotes on "pollution"], which talks of an orchestrated propaganda campaign to convince the public the air's dirty. It's all a myth folks, that brown cloud's as fresh as daisies, the studies detailing the many thousands killed each year by pollution-related lung disease are all lies. I guess that means there's not much point to biodiesel. They're always the same style, these things, there's a common underlying shape to them. Driven by the same motors I suppose - all this denial stuff seems to emanate from the same rather narrow political spectrum, it's a political agenda that's calling the tune, not an objective, scientific one. That's conjectural, but I haven't seen any exceptions yet. Interesting that all these guys seem to share the assumption that people - "the" people - are innocent little lambs who can't fend for themselves, are so-o easily fooled, can't decide anything for themselves, have no discernment, and are generally incompetent and not to be trusted. Of course you can find evidence for this if you're looking for it (to prove what, and why?), but there's vastly more evidence to the contrary. >I read it intending to refute it and set my friend straight, but it >didn't quite work out that way. The key reference listed in Beckman, >which I checked out, was a Department of Labor [?] study of the total >casualty cost of the nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to disposal, >compared with other sources of energy. This was a very thorough >actuarial study which included not only actual deaths and injuries per >energy unit generated, but expected "excess deaths" from long-term >effects of release of radioactive matierials, occupational and casual >radiation exposure. Nuclear came out neck-and-neck for first [safest] >place with natural gas. You don't date the study, again, and the only point worth noting here is that it would have been a pre-1990 study (pre-1976, actually). Sorry, Marc, you're agreeing with what agrees with you and calling the rest "propaganda". Again. >That forced me to look further, because there >was no way to reconcile those well-documented (and publicly available) >figures with the anti-nuclear crowd's propaganda - it wasn't simply a >matter of opinion or interpretation. It didn't take me long to develop >an extremely jaundiced view of the anti-nuclear crowd and their >propaganda, which at that time was mild and seemed rational. > >I think that even without Beckman, I would have eventually been made >suspicious by rhetorical tricks like using the same word "nuke" for both >nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs, but Beckman gave me an early start. Marc you use a lot of the loaded words of propaganda, but "nuke" isn't one of them, it's just usage, its use goes right across the spectrum, not rhetorical trickery, not a dark plot, it hasn't been fed into people's brains by evil manipulators. It's slang, is all. Haven't you got anything a bit less unconvincing than Beckman and all this pre-1990 Cold Warrior spin? Regards Keith Addison Journey to Forever Handmade Projects Tokyo http://journeytoforever.org/ >Marc de Piolenc ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Small business owners... Tell us what you think! http://us.click.yahoo.com/vO1FAB/txzCAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
