Bhairitu wrote: > Of course the corporate press (Bloomberg News) is going to say that! Born > yesterday? :-D
Gone blind? I listed several others (including Scientific American) and noted that there were many more (and not just from the "corporate press"). The thing is, Bhairitu, the more experts' opinions on this that you read, the more you have to expand your conspiracy to account for the fact that so many of them agree. And the more you have to extend credibility to nonexperts, such as the right-wing former lawyer and evangelical Christian novelist who wrote the post poor Share puts so much stock in, and whose knowledgeable readers tore to shreds (see my other post with the negative comments--you won't read it, because, like Share, you much prefer to wallow in bad news, whether the news holds up to examination or not). It isn't that there's a perfect consensus by any means. But there is very strong disagreement among qualified scientists about how much radiation is dangerous to human health. And there's a tremendous amount of ignorance among laypeople about what constitutes a significant rise in radioactivity. I'm just as ignorant as most laypeople, but at least I have the smarts to know I'm ignorant and to seek other opinions. For instance, from the comments from the blog in my other post on one of the "28 signs": "...The researchers looked at the isotopes found in the bluefin tuna and found that the 'naturally occurring' isotopes were present in amounts that were orders of magnitude larger than the amounts traceable to the Fukushima accident." IOW, either the study didn't say what the blogger thought it said, or he knew it didn't say what he wanted readers to think it said. And that isn't even an opinion, it's a scientific fact. The commenters picked up on a whole bunch of these misleading (or deliberately false) conclusions. Did it even occur to Share to wonder whether there might be any reason to question them? It did not. And it wouldn't to you either. On 10/25/2013 02:21 PM, authfriend@... mailto:authfriend@... wrote: Absolutely hilarious, from one perspective. From another, sad and pathetic, to spend one's precious time and energy ignorantly worrying about wildly exaggerated threats to the "whole planet" when there are so many real threats to its welfare to which not enough attention is being paid. Share wrote: > Anyone who doesn't think that the whole planet is being adversely affected > by radiation from > Fukushima are IMO in denial. Better to face it without fear and figure out > how to handle it. Better to stop denying one's ignorance, and figure out how to handle that. Here's a start, from an article in Bloomberg News. (Share won't read any of this, because she doesn't want to have to give up her Prophet of Doom role; it makes her feel, you know, Important.) ---------- Radiation Threat And what of the lasting threat from radiation? Remarkably, outside the immediate area of Fukushima, this is hardly a problem at all. Although the crippled nuclear reactors themselves still pose a danger, no one, including personnel who worked in the buildings, died from radiation exposure. Most experts agree that future health risks from the released radiation, notably radioactive iodine-131 and cesiums-134 and - 137, are extremely small and likely to be undetectable. Even considering the upper boundary of estimated effects, there is unlikely to be any detectable increase in cancers in Japan, Asia or the world except close to the facility, according to a World Health Organization report. There will almost certainly be no increase in birth defects or genetic abnormalities from radiation. Even in the most contaminated areas, any increase in cancer risk will be small. For example, a male exposed at age 1 has his lifetime cancer risk increase from 43 percent to 44 percent. Those exposed at 10 or 20 face even smaller increases in risk -- similar to what comes from having a whole-body computer tomography scan or living for 12 to 25 years in Denver amid background radiation in the Rocky Mountains. (There is no discernible difference in the cancer rates between people who live in Denver and those in Los Angeles or New York.) Rather than stand as a warning of the radiation danger posed by nuclear power, in other words, Fukushima has become a reminder that uninformed fears aren’t the same as actual risks. Why are the anticipated risks from Japan’s nuclear accident so small? Perhaps the most important reason is that about 80 percent of the radiation released was blown into the ocean. Radioactive contamination of the sea sounds dreadful, but because oceans naturally contain large amounts of radioactive materials, the net increase in oceanic radioactivity is minuscule. ---------- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/fukushima-radiation-proves-less-deadly-than-feared.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/fukushima-radiation-proves-less-deadly-than-feared.html It turns out, by the way, that the worst health effects from Fukushima will be psychosocial rather than physical--high percentages of depression and anxiety among the Japanese, especially those who lived close to the nuclear plants. Also see: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57571880/cancer-risk-from-fukushima-nuclear-plant-disaster-quite-small-says-world-health-organization/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57571880/cancer-risk-from-fukushima-nuclear-plant-disaster-quite-small-says-world-health-organization/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/japans-nuclear-meltdown/fukushima-radiation-estimate-doubles-but-cancer-risk-lower-than-expected/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/japans-nuclear-meltdown/fukushima-radiation-estimate-doubles-but-cancer-risk-lower-than-expected/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster And many others. Yes, there are serious threats to the ocean environment and its critters in the area of Fukushima--but not to the "whole planet." And not to humans. Here's another article of interest: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=radioactive-water-leaks-from-fukushima http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=radioactive-water-leaks-from-fukushima "The overall contamination of ocean life by the Fukushima meltdown still remains very low compared with the effects of naturally occurring radioactivity and leftover contamination from U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s. [Marine biologist Nicholas] Fisher said he’d be 'shocked' if the ongoing leaks of contaminated water had a significant impact on the ocean ecosystems." And one more, this one about Chernobyl: http://today.ttu.edu/2011/04/25-years-later-amazing-adaptation-in-chernobyl http://today.ttu.edu/2011/04/25-years-later-amazing-adaptation-in-chernobyl ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com> mailto:fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com wrote: Anyone who doesn't think that the whole planet is being adversely affected by radiation from Fukushima are IMO in denial. Better to face it without fear and figure out how to handle it.
