Comments on: News Sources Ignore EPA's 1 in 100 Odds of Livable Future Without the American Power Act

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:13:26 +0000

That is the media’s job. I rounded numbers to make it easy for you to remember.

The EPA has scientists and statisticians who go into all the analysis and generate unreadable clumps of dense text for PHDs to peruse in 131 page PDFs that you won’t ever read, and if you do, you’ll be snoozing as you happen to skim over the most important numbers buried in the middle of a paragraph somewhere: our chance at a livable future.

Since that news is urgent, the media’s job is to get it out there. And not take up too much of your time digesting it.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:50:57 +0000

I think the reason that this does not make the news is that the estimates are too rounded. If they were more specific they might actually seem like credible estimates as opposed to the value-based judgements that someone from the EPA pulled out of a hat to indicate urgency.

By: Roger Garrett

Roger Garrett — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:30:34 +0000

The density of understanding that allows this sort of thing to happen is just unbelievable. Twenty to forty cents a day against global destruction,, and the benefit (we get to continue living in a viable civilization) is not even mentioned. And even that report doesn’t count the economic and health benefits of moving from dirty to clean energy and building new industries, plus the energy costs saved over time, or the costs of environmental destruction from energy extraction, or the costs of “mitigating” climate change effects. A. Siegel goes into this aspect at “All Costs, No Benefits” at http://getenergysmartnow.com/2010/06/16/all-costs-no-benefits/