[ RadSafe ] presentations on controversial public issues work better with social science

[Karen Street]

Jeff, 

I am willing to forgo discussing the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, on or off list. However, my posting on a successful presentation on nuclear power immediately became a discussion about climate change; no one discussed my presenting to audiences that were mixed or anti-nuclear. Climate change has been discussed a number of times on this list since I joined, almost always from the skeptics/deniers vantage. My friend who told me about this list left it more than a year ago because she was tired of hearing that climate change isn't happening, and besides, the causes are natural.

Climate change is part of the nuclear discussion. It's part of the policy discussion, because the most important solution to climate change from a very long list of very important solutions (adding a cost to greenhouse gases) is also considered to be the most important policy change leading to expansion of nuclear power in every major policy report I've read. Climate change is part of the discussion with many who are hostile to or neutral on nuclear power, because concerns about climate change are shifting public thinking (more in the UK than here, but also here—people who protested Diablo Canyon are part of my support in creating presentations that appeal to people such as themselves). A conservative climatologist (Kerry Emanuel) interviewed by a liberal (Chris Mooney), both pro-nuclear, spends some time discussing how conservatives who deny climate change (or are skeptical) cannot be part of the discussion on solutions, and how their voices are needed. http://www.pointofinquiry.org/kerry_emanuel_conservative_for_climate_science/

My friend was driven crazy by what she saw as an attachment to flat-Earth science on this list. In another group, I heard some young university people left for that reason. 

It's an important discussion to have. 

> Or offline. Arghh. 
> 

--
Best wishes, 
Karen Street
Friends Energy Project
blog http://pathsoflight.us/musing/index.php