(edit title) Greenpeace activists charged for nuke break-in Options

[The Local]

Thirty activists who broke into two Swedish nuclear power plants on Tuesday were formally charged with trespassing on Friday.

All of the detainees are foreigners and public radio station Sveriges Radio (SR) identified some of them as Germans.

Some 29 activists from the environmental group Greenpeace were charged with trespass and one was charged with aggravated trespass.

The latter was charged with the more serious offence as he was able to remain within the power station for more than a day.

The charges relate to the a break in to the Forsmark nuclear power plant in eastern Sweden and could see the activists fined. Four interpreters were employed to assist the court.

Click to read the full article.

[jackityjack]

Thank you Greenpeace for highlighting the clear and present dangers of nuclear energy. And also for suggesting cleaner alternatives. Good on ya!

[byke]

"The government has called on Vattenfall, which operates both plants, to explain the fiasco. "
Ask yourself this question : Who owns and operates "Vattenfall" ?
"Eva Hallden, director of the Ringhals plant, told the TT news agency that the security response would have been more intense if the intruders had been considered dangerous."
I am lost for words ...
Heja Sverige!

[entry]

Idiots jump a fence, hide in trees and complain that all of them were not found on the grounds outside of the nuke plant. What security threat did they pose?
Here is a partial list of wind farm deaths/accidents:
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/fullaccidents.pdf
Show me the stacks of bodies that the anti-science/anti-vaxers/Global Warming believers claim are laying on the roadside due to nuclear accidents or use.
The Panic Over Fukushima - WSJ.com
-http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772404577589270444059332.html
No respect for the morons that have to check their Ipads for calendar information to see which protest/cause they have regained conciseness after passing out the night before. Put on your black hoodies, jump up and down and hoot and howl.

[Bender B Rodriquez]

The state owns Vattenfall, but they do not run and operate it if that's what you are after.

[eppie]

@entry
correction; only pro science people know global warming is true.
The uneducated masses believe in conspiracy theories, people such as yourself it seems.

[skogsbo]

If they wanted to protest about green issues and global warming, why break into a nuke plant and not coal, oil or gas. Hopefully they'll lock them up for wasting people's time.

[Nomark]

Eppie
I'm a proper scientist who publishes in peer-reviewed journals, works in academia etc etc. However, my views of global warming attribution have changed over the years. At first I had no problem with the AGW-hypothesis since I believed that peer-review worked well, as it does in my discipline. However the flaws in the hockey stick temperature reconstruction and, more importantly, the response of the community to these flaws (i.e. ignore them and smear those who identified the flaws) has led me (and a lot of people) to a rethink. Add to that the ridiculous "science is settled" claims (science is *never* settled) and the even more ridiculous consensus arguments (science does not proceed by consensus - it proceeds via reproducibility and falsification tests) and I've become a downright sceptic. I'm happy to be convinced that AGW is happening to a degree which we should worry about but I've found the arguments and evidence not especially strong.
Also, I doubt you'd find anyone more "pro science" and less inclined to believe conspiracy theories than me on this site.

[MichaelZWilliamson]

Yes, nuclear energy is so dangerous. Consider the zero people who died at 3 Mile Island, and the zero people who died at Fukushima. Tragic.
We should absolutely stick to burning coal, or living in trees in the forest. Or something.

[Reason and Realism]

@ Nomark
Something like 50% less polar ice coverage in summer this year than 20 years ago, highest average temperatures on record, record number of forest fires and droughts.
If you are a sceptic about global warming, and you say 'hey maybe this is just a freak statistical data point', then how do you reconcile the massive temperature rise in the past 100 years vs. all previous 100 year slices that can be analyzed by oxygen content within ice core samples etc for the last 10000 years? Are you of the opinion that it is a coincidence that this temperature rise and the industrialization of the world occured in the same 100 year slice? Even if the entire increase is due to the population increase and livestock, it still makes sense to attempt to limit that increase.
I am pro-nuclear power, partly because it is climate neutral, but also partly pragmatism, namely the fact that it is an installed power base that simply needs increased security (where I see a great utility for an otherwise idle Swedish military batalion or two with night vision equipment etc...). I would be even more comfortable if all of our electricity was hydro electric, but for now I am more than prepared to live with a gradual transition over 20 yearrs to hydro and other green sources of for use in Sweden.

[Nomark]

Reason and Realism
You are referring to the past temperature reconstructions. They are problematic for a number of reasons. One problem is that some show exceptionalism and others don't. Its extremely unwise to say "look at this measurement - it shows a warm century in comparison to the rest" when other measurements point towards this century as not being exceptional. To do this is called cherry picking and we frown upon it in science (well some of us do - climate scientists seem not to care to much). A lot of assumptions and statistical reasoning go into making these temperature reconstructions. This is why its important that results are independently verified from raw data. However, much of the data used to make these measurements is not openly archived so independent reproduction (also important for science) is not possible. Please show where the raw data for the measurement you cite is archived. Please also show me where the results have been independently reproduced.

[Reason and Realism]

@ Nomark
Gas absorption spectroscopy has been around for about 100 years, and this shows the easily reproducible spectrum over which CO2 absorbs and re-radiates thermal energy (roughly half of which will be radiated back toward the earth). Place any barrier next to a heat source and the temperature will rise within the region enclosed by the barrier, even an imperfect barrier. The spectrum of sunlight has also been measured and most of the sun's energy is at wavelengths to which gaseous CO2 is transparent.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/1...create-warming/
The logical conclusion is simply that over production of CO2 will lead to a temperature increase, regardless of the source of the CO2, and regardless of whatever factors affected global temperatures over the past 10000 years. If the local derivative of temperature vs. time is alarmingly high, and if the rate of CO2 increase in the atmsophere over the past 100 years is at a record high, then it makes sense to reduce the emissions of CO2.
This is the accepted model of global warming. What evidence (reproducible, and multiply verified, to adhere to your criteria) do you have to suggest that this century's thermal temperature increase is NOTcaused by CO2?
In any case if the temperature rise is costing trillions and killing millions, then it makes sense for us to attempt to slow it, and limiting CO2 is one avenue to do that, even IF (and I emphasize IF) CO2 over production is not the principal cause of the rise in temp that we have had over the past 100 years.

[entry]

Flubber and ground up Unicorn horns cannot support human existence.
Do the math and realize why we laugh at you. -Paul

[Rat bat]

Well two things , firstly if you do the maths you will find that the addition of more CO2 will not block infra red light from leaving the earth. The absorption at the wavelengths for CO2 is already very strong (has been for many 100s of years)
What is more dangerous to us is if we release gases into the air which block other wavelengths for example methane releases into the air or worse of all SF6 (which both absorb at other wavelengths) are far more harmful to the climate.
Secondly these Greenpeace clowns need some real hardcore industrial grade punishment, a fine will not do the job. I think that community service cleaning toilets would be ideal.

[Nomark]

Reason and realism
Glad to see you've dropped your proxies argument following me pointing out that other proxies tell different stories and that the data aren't generally available for replication studies. Cherry picking and non-replication is pretty much anti-science in my book.
I'm well aware of the CO2- heat argument - I'm a physicist. You'll find few sceptics who disagree with you on this point (although please be careful about translating laboratory measurements to the earth's system, things are complicated) so I'm unsure why you labour with it other than that you don't really know how climate models (used to determine human-induced contributions) work. The problem is that its *not* the greenhouse gas CO2 which is dominantly responsible for the predicted rises in the temperature. The climate models postulate that the CO2 gives rise to more water vapour and the water vapour causes temperature rises. While the theory of CO2-induced greenhouse warming is well established and experimentally tested by laboratory work, the water vapour feedback mechanism isn't - eg nobody really knows how to model clouds properly. Funnily enough, the climate modellers and IPCC tend not to promote that bit of info, instead relying on the CO2 argument i.e. the soundest part of the argument chain to convince the masses (it clearly worked on you) . Many scientists think the feedback leads to more warming, others think it could even be weakly negative. The IPCC models certainly think that feedback leads to more warming. However, this means relying on models which haven't undergone classic falsification tests. For example, we have faith in the predictions of quantum mechanics (another physics model) because there have been a number of measurements which could have put that theory to the sword, yet QM survived by predicting what was observed, time and time again. Climate models haven't yet passed that fundamental test. When they fail to describe data, they are simply modified. Like cherry-picking, scientists take this type of thing (i.e. falsification) seriously (though maybe not in climate science).
In short, lots of the non-controversial things I teach students about how to do
experimental science (reproducibility, no cherry picking, falsification tests) simply haven't been done here to the standard I would expect. None of this means that the AGW hypothesis is wrong. Being sceptical means what it says on the tin i.e. not being dogmatic. It does, however, mean that the AGW-hypothesis rests on far weaker foundations than those who promote it would care to admit. This is very important information when it comes to deciding whether mitigating action should be taken.