The Japan nuke plant damage, with so far zero casualties, still commands far more attention than the tsunami’s tens of thousands of deaths. Consider also: When, in 1975, about 30 dams in central China failed in short succession due to severe flooding, an estimated 230,000 people died. Include the toll from this single event, and fatalities from hydropower far exceed the number of deaths from all other energy sources. (
Yes, sure, you can prevent death by natural disaster, but not the disaster itself - read again and you will see that I talked exactly about that and I did it on purpose.Besides: There is more damage to a nuclear disaster then just dead people. Land becomes unusable for decades. That alone should be enough.
Wikipeida says the average adult male is 57% water by body weight. We are water.
We have no choice but to live near water, and you can't fear things like that.
At some point the sun will die and either get smaller, making earth cold, or larger, making earth really hot. Just like moving away from the coasts, humans should try to find a newer planet with a more stable star, but that's not feasible.
more important, until the last 150 years or so, the economic and health benefits of living (and building towns or cities) near water were gigantic.
In terms of our ancestral context, hydrophilia would beat hydrophobia hands down for fitness, so it's little wonder that we do not fear water.
Even in modern society, the benefits of living near water far outweigh the risks for most people (as judged by property and land values), and this seems like a reasonable estimation if you are even moderately prudent.
The real point to the comparison seems to be how little danger is actually associated with nuclear power when looked at purely from a statistical standpoint. Partly *because* we are so frightened by nature of the threat, and the worst case possibilities, the industry is associated with so many more precautions than other sources of energy which keeps the actual threat to a bare minimum.
I would rather live next to a nuclear plant than a coal or oil plant. At least if something goes wrong at a nuclear plant, I can be damned sure I'll know *exactly* what my exposures are, and I'll be warned to evacuate on the least possibility of real problems. Anything short of a chernobyl level incident will probably not have a major bad effect.
Nuclear unnatural? That is a pretty broad claim, when you can simply pile a bunch of high quality uranium ore together and create a "reactor." http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
I'm not so sure it'd be covered more in the absence of the nuclear problems. I wish I still had LexisNexis so I could do a more accurate comparison, but remember the 2005 Kashmir earthquake that killed around 80,000 people? Maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the coverage of that quake being roughly equivalent to the coverage of the Japan tsunami. Just doing a basic search for "media coverage 2005 kashmir earthquake" I found a few sites that seemed to back me up, e.g. this.
Robin always confuses me when he posts these "the media is biased!" posts because, like someone else said... duh. Look at the media coverage of car accidents vs. murders. In the present case I think the particular bias most affecting news coverage is probably the bias for a presently occurring story rather than "history," but it's clear that other biases (anti-nuke sentiments among them) are at work too. It just doesn't seem that surprising to me.
but events from the tsunami are still occurring. the confirmed death total is rising each day, rescuers are helping those displaced, looking for missing persons, etc. im sure the news could cover this if they stopped the nuclear tail-wagging
personally i think the global coverage is so biased that you could compare it to the Times article about the 11-year-old girl who was 'blamed' for being gang-raped
except that you CAN prevent deaths from natural disasters. buildings are coded to withstand earthquakes, barriers are erected to prevent/limit water from coming ashore. the bolstering of these defenses is what the news should be focusing on rather than the comparatively insignificant 'disaster' at the nuclear plant
simple. Living near the water is fun as hell. Swimming in the summer. Skating in the winter. Fishing. Boating. Enjoying a cold beer while looking out onto the water with the salty breeze coming in. It's just nice.
I support nuclear energy, and I agree the attention being paid to the nuclear plant versus the actual tsunami is outrageous, but it's no surprise that humans really, really like living near water.
I agree with the others about the visibility of water vs the invisibility of radiation.
If anything recreates primitive, animalistic fears of supernatural 'evil spirits', it's radiation.
I wonder if that fear of evil spirits is our primitive response to unusually (naturally) radioactive ground, or poison gas blooms, and things like that. Evil spirits have surrounded us! Run, Run as fast as you can!
One small point: There are lots of benefits of living near water (or travelling to it) to outweigh the risks, such as picturesque views, opportunities for exercise, job opportunities, etc. There are few benefits to living near a nuclear plant, other than obviously convenience if you work there.Another point: Nuclear plants are newsworthy because human policy decisions lead to their creation/closure, so there are more talking and debating points. Bodies of water don't have people to speak for them on TV.
First of all I think most people are not afraid of nuclear plants in the way they are afraid of tsunamis and earthquakes.A natural disaster is frightening but I guess there is just no way to prevent it. It is coming either way, so you better learn to deal with it when it happens.A nuclear plant is believed to be dangerous (I hold that belief myself) and it's not outside of reach for people to maybe successfully try to do something against this danger, so if you are afraid of them you shouldn't waste your energy on trying to calm down the earth's crust but rather try to prevent natural disasters getting worse through nuclear ones.
Sorry to not post this in one post. There is one more thing about nuclear plants: We still don't know, what to do with the waste.
Yes, sure, you can prevent death by natural disaster, but not the disaster itself - read again and you will see that I talked exactly about that and I did it on purpose.Besides: There is more damage to a nuclear disaster then just dead people. Land becomes unusable for decades. That alone should be enough.
I thought I was pretty clearly signaling that I didn't agree with the common interpretation of natural when I put it in scare-quotes.
Wikipeida says the average adult male is 57% water by body weight. We are water.
We have no choice but to live near water, and you can't fear things like that.
At some point the sun will die and either get smaller, making earth cold, or larger, making earth really hot. Just like moving away from the coasts, humans should try to find a newer planet with a more stable star, but that's not feasible.
more important, until the last 150 years or so, the economic and health benefits of living (and building towns or cities) near water were gigantic.
In terms of our ancestral context, hydrophilia would beat hydrophobia hands down for fitness, so it's little wonder that we do not fear water.
Even in modern society, the benefits of living near water far outweigh the risks for most people (as judged by property and land values), and this seems like a reasonable estimation if you are even moderately prudent.
The real point to the comparison seems to be how little danger is actually associated with nuclear power when looked at purely from a statistical standpoint. Partly *because* we are so frightened by nature of the threat, and the worst case possibilities, the industry is associated with so many more precautions than other sources of energy which keeps the actual threat to a bare minimum.
I would rather live next to a nuclear plant than a coal or oil plant. At least if something goes wrong at a nuclear plant, I can be damned sure I'll know *exactly* what my exposures are, and I'll be warned to evacuate on the least possibility of real problems. Anything short of a chernobyl level incident will probably not have a major bad effect.
Nuclear unnatural? That is a pretty broad claim, when you can simply pile a bunch of high quality uranium ore together and create a "reactor." http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
I'm not so sure it'd be covered more in the absence of the nuclear problems. I wish I still had LexisNexis so I could do a more accurate comparison, but remember the 2005 Kashmir earthquake that killed around 80,000 people? Maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the coverage of that quake being roughly equivalent to the coverage of the Japan tsunami. Just doing a basic search for "media coverage 2005 kashmir earthquake" I found a few sites that seemed to back me up, e.g. this.
Robin always confuses me when he posts these "the media is biased!" posts because, like someone else said... duh. Look at the media coverage of car accidents vs. murders. In the present case I think the particular bias most affecting news coverage is probably the bias for a presently occurring story rather than "history," but it's clear that other biases (anti-nuke sentiments among them) are at work too. It just doesn't seem that surprising to me.
but events from the tsunami are still occurring. the confirmed death total is rising each day, rescuers are helping those displaced, looking for missing persons, etc. im sure the news could cover this if they stopped the nuclear tail-wagging
personally i think the global coverage is so biased that you could compare it to the Times article about the 11-year-old girl who was 'blamed' for being gang-raped
except that you CAN prevent deaths from natural disasters. buildings are coded to withstand earthquakes, barriers are erected to prevent/limit water from coming ashore. the bolstering of these defenses is what the news should be focusing on rather than the comparatively insignificant 'disaster' at the nuclear plant
simple. Living near the water is fun as hell. Swimming in the summer. Skating in the winter. Fishing. Boating. Enjoying a cold beer while looking out onto the water with the salty breeze coming in. It's just nice.
I support nuclear energy, and I agree the attention being paid to the nuclear plant versus the actual tsunami is outrageous, but it's no surprise that humans really, really like living near water.
I agree with the others about the visibility of water vs the invisibility of radiation.
If anything recreates primitive, animalistic fears of supernatural 'evil spirits', it's radiation.
I wonder if that fear of evil spirits is our primitive response to unusually (naturally) radioactive ground, or poison gas blooms, and things like that. Evil spirits have surrounded us! Run, Run as fast as you can!
One small point: There are lots of benefits of living near water (or travelling to it) to outweigh the risks, such as picturesque views, opportunities for exercise, job opportunities, etc. There are few benefits to living near a nuclear plant, other than obviously convenience if you work there.Another point: Nuclear plants are newsworthy because human policy decisions lead to their creation/closure, so there are more talking and debating points. Bodies of water don't have people to speak for them on TV.
I've gone further and had my whole body freeze-dried.
First of all I think most people are not afraid of nuclear plants in the way they are afraid of tsunamis and earthquakes.A natural disaster is frightening but I guess there is just no way to prevent it. It is coming either way, so you better learn to deal with it when it happens.A nuclear plant is believed to be dangerous (I hold that belief myself) and it's not outside of reach for people to maybe successfully try to do something against this danger, so if you are afraid of them you shouldn't waste your energy on trying to calm down the earth's crust but rather try to prevent natural disasters getting worse through nuclear ones.
A farmer committed suicide after being told his produce couldn't be sold as he was in the exclusion zone.
Moreover, a worker at the Fukushima II plant was killed by a crane.