Tópico: Posturas anti-científicas adotadas por ambientalistas

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Why Are Environmentalists
Taking Anti-Science Positions?
On issues ranging from genetically modified crops to nuclear power, environmentalists are increasingly refusing to listen to scientific arguments that challenge standard green positions. This approach risks weakening the environmental movement and empowering climate contrarians.
by fred pearce

[...]

We have been making claims that simply do not stand up. We are accused of being anti-science — and not without reason. A few, even close friends, have begun to compare this casual contempt for science with the tactics of climate contrarians.

[...]

The most recent claim, published in September in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, that GM corn can produced tumors in rats, has been attacked as flawed in execution and conclusion by a wide range of experts with no axe to grind. In any event, the controversial study was primarily about the potential impact of Roundup, a herbicide widely used with GM corn, and not the GM technology itself.

Nonetheless, the reaction of some in the environment community to the reasoned critical responses of scientists to the paper has been to claim a global conspiracy among researchers to hide the terrible truth. One scientist was dismissed on the Web site GM Watch for being “a longtime member of the European Food Safety Authority, i.e. the very body that approved the GM corn in question.” That’s like dismissing the findings of a climate scientist because he sits on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the “very body” that warned us about climate change. See what I mean about aping the worst and most hysterical tactics of the climate contrarians?

[...]

The problem is the same in the energy debate. Many environmentalists who argue, as I do, that climate change is probably the big overarching issue facing humanity in the 21st century, nonetheless often refuse to recognize that nuclear power could have a role in saving us from the worst. [...]

One sure result of Germany deciding to abandon nuclear power in the wake of last year’s Fukushima nuclear accident (calamitous, but any death toll will be tiny compared to that from the tsunami that caused it) will be rising carbon emissions from a revived coal industry. By one estimate, the end of nuclear power in Germany will result in an extra 300 million tons of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere between now and 2020 — more than the annual emissions of Italy and Spain combined. [...]

Last, let’s look at the latest source of green angst: shale gas and the drilling technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, used to extract it. There are probably good reasons for not developing shale gas in many places. Its extraction can pollute water and cause minor earth tremors, for instance. But at root this is an argument about carbon — a genuinely double-edged issue that needs debating. For there is a good environmental case to be made that shale gas, like nuclear energy, can be part of the solution to climate change. That case should be heard and not shouted down.

Opponents of shale gas rightly say it is a carbon-based fossil fuel. But it is a much less dangerous fossil fuel than coal. Carbon emissions from burning natural gas are roughly half those from burning coal. A switch from coal to shale gas is the main reason why, in 2011, U.S. CO2 emissions fell by almost 2 percent.

We cannot ignore that. With coal’s share of the world’s energy supply rising from 25 to 30 percent in the past half decade, a good argument can be made that a dash to exploit cheap shale gas and undercut this surge in coal would do more to cut carbon emissions than almost anything else. [...]

Many environmentalists are imbued with a sense of their own exceptionalism and original virtue. But we have been dangerously wrong before. When Rachel Carson’s sound case against the mass application of DDT as an agricultural pesticide morphed into blanket opposition to much smaller indoor applications to fight malaria, it arguably resulted in millions of deaths as the diseases resurged.

And more recently, remember the confusion over biofuels? They were a new green energy source we could all support. I remember, when the biofuels craze began about 2005, I reported on a few voices urging caution. They warned that the huge land take of crops like corn and sugar cane for biofuels might threaten food supplies; that the crops would add to the destruction of rainforests; and that the carbon gains were often small to non-existent. But Friends of the Earth and others trashed them as traitors to the cause of green energy.

Well, today most greens are against most biofuels. Not least Friends of the Earth, which calls them a “big green con.” In fact, we may have swung too far in the other direction, undermining research into second-generation biofuels that could be both land- and carbon-efficient.


[...]

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/why_are_environmentalists_taking_anti-science_positions/2584/

[Geotecton]

Desconfiança que pairam sobre alguns pesquisadores que historicamente se opõe ao movimento ambientalista; comportamento de fanatismo dogmático diante de dados que não corroboram as suas "crenças" e ação baseada em 'pensamentos idealizados' ("achismo") são alguns dos motivos que eu posso supor.

[Luiz F.]

A questão da energia nuclear é um caso interessante dessa postura ambientalista extremada. A ideologia corrente é de que toda a energia de que nós necessitamos pode e deve ser obtida de fontes como a energia solar ou eólica, ou alguns tipos mais alternativos, como a energia das marés, ou aqueles "fornos" solares gigantes.

É uma ideologia bonita e parece ser de fato ma preocupação sincera, mas os fatos dizem que em termos de eficiência, escala, confiabilidade, viabilidade, etc, essas alternativas não servem muito, talvez mais como um complemento a um sistema baseado em uma fonte perene.

Quanto as opções disponíveis que são realistas de se implementar sempre tem alguma coisa que determinados grupos vem babando contra. As termoelétricas tem seus problemas óbvios, as hidroelétricas ultimamente tem causado muito rebuliço, (vide Belo Monte que graças as modificações para agradar aos ambientalistas quase perde sua razão de ser) e as termonucleares que depois de Fukushima e todo o alarde da mídia sobre o apocalipse nuclear que estava por vir, tornaram sua implementação muito impopular, embora seja talvez a melhor alternativa disponível para se reduzir as emissões de CO2 de maneira abrangente, além de ser extremamente segura. (Creio que após Fukushima as normas devem ter se tornado até mais severas).

Eu particularmente não tenho boas perspectivas para o futuro.