nexus wrote:Wow, I love the way writing about occupy stirs up all the trolls.They really DID have an effect.
Nexus, don't confuse commenting on Naomi's whotsy chops poor quality diatribe with being a troll. A troll is someone whom comes onto a forum to disrupt the debate. As I came onto the forum four years before you, that makes you chronologically the troll
Naomi the ill informed basically got confused about the right to protect private property rights.
When occupy makes public their intention to trespass on your land, commit a tortious interference with a business/contract rights and disrupt the publics access to their cash( the life blood of a market economy) then the business has the right to counter the threat.
JavaScriptDonkey wrote:
No one is denying instances of police brutality but you seem to be denying that some members of the Occupy movement were planning criminal acts that make them justified targets for the FBI.
How dare you be so troll-like!
Amazing how one sided points of view are, this group is all nicey-nicey, those people are all horrifying terrible, and heaven forbid you point out all the shades of grey involved in the world. Knowing there are two sides to every story makes you a troll!
I always considered it being fair minded and well informed, but hey, whatever flips your lid I suppose.
biffvernon wrote:
Engineers whose salaries depend on believing that power stations don't pollute are certainly not the sort of experts to rely on.
How do you know they believe that? Maybe they believe they do pollute, but people still need power. I know, I know, you believe all your electrons come only from non-polluting wind turbines, but what power source was used to make the turbines? and what pollution is generated by the maintenance operations, and in making the concrete for the foundations etc etc?
Then there's the plastics used to make your domestic bits and pieces like your computer f'rinstance.
woodburner wrote:
How do you know they believe that? Maybe they believe they do pollute, but people still need power.
They don't need power. Humans have managed for most of the time since we came down from the trees without it. But we do want power. We want it so much that we discount the pollution. It now appears that this could result in the end of humanity but most of people carry on regardless and engineers make it possible. I also carry on, but not entirely regardless.
Did you not think that you could have used that grant maintained free education to reduce the pollution generated in the obvious industries?
Pretty much all of them believe the pollution that results from their action is not important enough stop doing it.
Yes, instead of joining the industry, I went into education with the deliberate objective of showing the next generation that our current way of life could be improved upon. I failed. We are in a worse mess that we appeared to be when I started my career.
JavaScriptDonkey wrote: who else do you think are the experts on power station pollution other than the engineers who run it?
Engineers whose salaries depend on believing that power stations don't pollute are certainly not the sort of experts to rely on.
Never met an engineer who works on belief.
I've met loads. They (are made to) believe in Engineering Solutions, when quite often the best solution involves removing something rather than adding to it. Here's a rather trivial and amusing example, but if you scale this up you get the general idea.
Yes I've met engineers like that as well but very few.
It doesn't really change the point though - the best people to increase the efficiency of these stations or reduce their overall output can only be engineers.
Flower waving ecologists can point to the problems associated with the pollution but that doesn't actually get anything done. Obviously Biff can survive without the power base line provided by coal, gas & nuclear but the rest of us like it when the lights come on.
JavaScriptDonkey wrote:Yes I've met engineers like that as well but very few.
It doesn't really change the point though - the best people to increase the efficiency of these stations or reduce their overall output can only be engineers.
That is of course perfectly true. But shaving bits off the pollution made by the previous generation of power-stations only addresses a fraction of the problem, and concentrating on that fraction (i.e. following the advisors' advice) is detracting from the bigger, overall problem that for one reason or another we need to stop relying on them, and pronto.
The staff on secondment are highly unlikely to be engineers. They will be lobbyists, public affairs, communications, and policy staff. I should be surprised if any of them laid eyes on a spanner from one year to the next. This isn't about making power stations more efficient or cleaner, it's about making the environment for power companies more conducive for their operation and profitability.
JavaScriptDonkey wrote:Workers in the power generation sector have children too. Maybe these people actually want to minimise pollution?
I'm sure that in many cases you are quite right there. It's very difficult to turn down a well paid job which might, perhaps, produce some pollution in some far off place or time. We most of us do it.
woodburner wrote:
How do you know they believe that? Maybe they believe they do pollute, but people still need power.
They don't need power.
I accept the point, but it is merely a pedantic point about words.
Humans have managed for most of the time since we came down from the trees without it.
Not true IMO, humans have been using fire practically forever.
But we do want power. We want it so much that we discount the pollution. It now appears that this could result in the end of humanity but most of people carry on regardless and engineers make it possible. I also carry on, but not entirely regardless.
(The electron thing is, of course, silly.)
All too easy to label things as silly if it gets in the way of arguing a position. EROEI is often not as good as the marketing hype.
featherstick wrote:The staff on secondment are highly unlikely to be engineers. They will be lobbyists, public affairs, communications, and policy staff. I should be surprised if any of them laid eyes on a spanner from one year to the next. This isn't about making power stations more efficient or cleaner, it's about making the environment for power companies more conducive for their operation and profitability.
Does that mean the wind turbine on Cameron's house in London was probably just for political brownie points, and not a sincere attempt to clean up the planet?
featherstick wrote:The staff on secondment are highly unlikely to be engineers. They will be lobbyists, public affairs, communications, and policy staff. I should be surprised if any of them laid eyes on a spanner from one year to the next. This isn't about making power stations more efficient or cleaner, it's about making the environment for power companies more conducive for their operation and profitability.
Does that mean the wind turbine on Cameron's house in London was probably just for political brownie points, and not a sincere attempt to clean up the planet?
