Thursday, July 17, 2008

Bias

I understand why people willfully mis-interpret facts in an attempt to put their side of view across.
It's a shame that they feel the need to do it though - if they were sure about something they could let the facts speak for them, rather than attempting to conjour up mass hysteria.

Two examples for you:

1) Legalectric
This blog publishes a link to a recent report saying that shutting down a coal station in china had positivie health effects.
The report notes that the station had no modern polution reduction equipment.
Legalectric cries out "oh - we need to shut all coal fired power stations".

Rubbish. Simply there is probably a safe limit for these emissions. The world health organisation publishes some for PM10's (from diesel engines).

2) Greenpeace UK.
These guys don't have a clue about electricy generation at the best of times (I have seen a claim, somewhere, that we're not facing a generation gap!).
Yesterday they were at at a climate change summit organised by the guardian.
They claim that CCS is "greenwash" and that we can't build anymore coal power stations because CCS won't work.
All I can say is that I hope that anyone who happens to read this (unlikey I know) has a better understanding of the world than they do.
Why don't they go and protest outside the chinese embassy then?

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