One More False Equivalence
by tristero
And while we’re on the subject of science….
The logic goes: people on the right have screwy ideas, therefore people on the left must have equally screwy ideas. And therefore, a reasonable person must position her/his own ideas between the equal “extremes” of right and left opinions.
Of course, this logic is itself screwy. But that doesn’t prevent the Times from publishing letters like this one, from a poor ‘ittle conservative who believes he was treated unfair:
Anti-science complaints are most often aimed at the creationism espoused by religious conservatives, but there’s rarely a word about the left’s dubious opposition to engineering marvels like nuclear energy…
That’s right: opposition to nuclear power is as extreme and intellectually vapid as refusing to accept the fact that organisms evolve.
There a little problem with that, however. It’s called reality. From CNN:
While the amount of radioactivity released into the environment in March 2011 [by the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster] has been estimated as between 10 percent and 50 percent of the fallout from the Chernobyl accident, the 400,000 tons of contaminated water stored on the Fukushima site contain more than 2.5 times the amount of radioactive cesium dispersed during the 1986 catastrophe in Ukraine…
…[A] huge amount of highly contaminated water – enough to fill 160 Olympic-size swimming pools…
Like it or not, nuclear energy is an extremely dangerous form of power. Given Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima (to name just three), opposition to the building of nuclear power plants is a reasonable position.
On the other hand, any way you cut it, creationism is simply a crude theology and nutso science that deserves not an iota of respect.
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