[mythrwy]

There is plenty of anti-science thinking in certain camps of the left as well.

Phone radiation, GMOs, nuclear power, dietary trends, mushrooms are conscious, the list of foo is pretty long if you look. Along with the anti-math, anti-logic, anti-historical evidence view of economics.

But I don't disagree there is a fair amount of right wing kookage spread about. Perhaps more than it's left wing counterpart.

For a long time I didn't really believe the "right wing" fake news thing was real. I'd never actually seen it. Then I visited my father in law who breathlessly informed us at dinner Obama was going to jail as they had proved his birth certificate was fake! Curious I looked at his facebook feed and almost fell over, it was almost all fake news right wing straight out of a parallel universe and really obviously nonsense for the most part. I don't know where he even found that stuff. So ya, it does happen. And I say that as a person who is very much not a leftist (nor a facebook user).

For whatever it's worth, I like to think of myself as a member of the "do what makes sense party". But we have few members and no groundswell and no formal organization it appears. Sadly.

[stephenr]

Being anti-nuclear doesn’t mean you’re anti-science, nor does questioning the value/cost/results of GMO foods.

[repolfx]

Indeed not, but I think maybe that's the point. There are lots of cases where you can disagree with the scientific consensus without being "anti-science", whatever that means.

Basically all scientific or logical analysis about power generation yields a pro-nuclear conclusion and thus anti-nuclear campaigners tend to make arguments about priorities rather than claim their opponents are anti-science; they argue the risks are underestimated, the costs of waste are too high etc.

As for GMO foods, again, the scientific consensus is there are no health problems with them, which is why the anti-GMO argument tends to be of the form "but what if they're just so super long term problems that we haven't seen them yet" (a.k.a. the EU's precautionary principle on blocking GMO foods from competing with EU farmers).

Look at it the other way around - lots of climate change skeptics make deeply scientific arguments, typically pointing out errors or mistakes in papers, cases of previous predictions that turned out to be false and so on. That doesn't make them anti-science, it arguably makes them campaigners for better science.

[stephenr]

> Basically all scientific or logical analysis about power generation yields a pro-nuclear conclusion

What's the scientific analysis that says power plants have on average cost a metric fuck ton more to clean up than was ever expected or planned for, or that there is still no effective plan to get rid of the waste they produce?

See this is my point. I can admit that some scientists are no doubt pro-nuclear, and pro-GMO.

But you apparently can't admit that there are scientists who don't believe one or both of those things is net positive.

[repolfx]

Remember that fossil fuel burning power plants also generate a ton of waste and nobody has a realistic plan to clean that up either (beyond CO2 extraction or geo-engineering, neither of which are more plausible than nuclear waste containment).

It's easy to argue nuclear power sucks when compared to a theoretical ideal. When compared to forms of power that dump their problematic waste into the atmosphere where it's nearly impossible to get back, having the nasty stuff conveniently packed into cylinders, ready for dropping into the continental shelf, doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

[stephenr]

> when compared to a theoretical ideal.

Renewable energy is not theoretical.

> nasty stuff conveniently packed into cylinders, ready for dropping into the continental shelf

Your plan for highly radioactive waste is to put it in canisters and drop them into the ocean.. sure, what could possibly go wrong?