How Original . . .

[kristopher]

How Original . . .
These Scholars Shared a Ghost. Who Knew?

By William M. Adler
Sunday, April 25, 2004; Page B01

AUSTIN

Everyone has quirks. Among mine is an obsession with matters nuclear: weapons, power, waste. I've been writing about little else for several years. So I was intrigued not long ago to run across an opinion piece in my hometown daily, the Austin American-Statesman headlined "Funds for nuclear waste storage should be used for just that."

The March 4 op-ed by Sheldon Landsberger, a University of Texas professor of nuclear engineering, argued trenchantly that the government is fleecing electric-power ratepayers, who for more than two decades have been contributing mandatory fees for the development of a proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Landsberger charged that a portion of the fees earmarked for the Nuclear Waste Fund is diverted to the U.S. Treasury. "Denying the Yucca Mountain project an adequate level of funding," he wrote, "is stealing money from taxpayers who were required to support the waste management project."

Strong words. Familiar ones, too. So familiar that I was sure they were entombed in the towering file of articles on nuclear waste that I, ahem, maintain. I knew I could excavate the words eventually. Or I could Google them. I typed in "Yucca Mountain" and "stealing money"; 0.11 seconds later, I had my cite: A Dec. 9, 2003, op-ed column in the State, the Columbia, S.C., daily. It appeared under the byline of Abdel E. Bayoumi, chairman of the department of mechanical engineering at the University of South Carolina. Wrote Prof. Bayoumi: "Denying the repository project an adequate amount of funding is essentially stealing money from the taxpayers who were required to support the waste management project."

Other sentences were identical, as was the entire last paragraph, but this was no case of garden-variety plagiarism; Landsberger had not appropriated the words of Bayoumi. Instead, as I was about to learn, Landsberger and other engineering professors at universities great and small had been sent op-eds over the past decade or more and asked to sign, seal and deliver them as their own to their local newspapers. The opinion pieces were written not by the academic experts, but originally by a PR agency in Washington, D.C., working on behalf of the nuclear energy industry.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I called...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38708-2004Apr24?language=printer

[DCKit]

1. You've reminded me...

I worked on the Yucca Mountain case for a couple of years and those phrases are more than a little familiar.

The gist of what I had to read and handle seemed to indicate that the owners of the power companies wanted that money back - not for Yucca Mountain or their rate payers, but for salaries and dividends.

Then again, I may just be cynical.

[NNadir]

2. This has to be the classic post on DU of all time.

Someone produces a link with a verbatim quotation without even one shred of independent thought - not even one independent word - as a complaint about a lack of "originality."

[kristopher]

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[kristopher]

5. What do you think they mean by Social Media Optimization?

Marketing Power of Buzz
Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts and wikis. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode your reputation management campaign.


How can this social media reputation management help you?
A multitude of social communities like Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Wikipedia and YouTube connect people who share common interests. These social media websites can be used as places to put out your reputation marketing messages through blog posts and blog search engines.



"Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts and wikis. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode your reputation management campaign."

"These social media websites can be used as places to put out your reputation marketing messages through blog posts and blog search engines."

Is this a description of a company that places ads on blogs and message boards? Do they allow ads on Wiki?

Interesting new field...

[kristopher]

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[madokie]

6. maybe that explains why a certain person here always seems to have his panties in such a wad

Working toward and hoping for a payday soon and its not coming. :rofl:

[Nederland]

7. Mildly interesting

However, I would think the important thing here is whether or not the argument being made is correct or not. Whether the words used to propagate the position are the product of some PR campaign is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether or not the position they are advocating is correct or not. If you have anything substantive to say in response to waste management funding I'd suggest that you say it.

[kristopher]

8. Yeah well that is one take on it.

Another would be that paid shills populating discussion boards are just that, paid shills. If they were going to present honest arguments they certainly wouldn't need to hide their identities, would they?

More specifically to your point, the arguments are in fact, most often fallacious, misleading or outright lies. For example, the cliams that 1) where could we possibly find the space for wind and solar 2) there is a lithium shortage 3) there is no danger of nuclear proliferation, 4) there is no danger from nuclear wastes 5) it isn't possible to address climate change any other way 6) since solar has been adopted on a wide scale yet, that is proof solar can't work. 7) being a paid pr agent spreading covert propaganda is mildly interesting,but irrelevant.

[Nederland]

9. I mostly agree

Except for points #3 and #4. Pro-nukes never say there is no danger of proliferation or that nuclear waste isn't dangerous. To claim that they do is to construct straw man arguments.

That being said, I do find it interesting that you still haven't addressed the main question in the OP. Namely, is it fair to insist that all the money collected to deal with nuclear waste disposal actually be spent on nuclear waste disposal? A straight forward yes or no answer would be appreciated.

[kristopher]

10. The main point of the OP is covert propaganda from the nuclear industry

I posted it.

[Nederland]

12. I see

So obviously you are more concerned with the origin of comments than the truth of them.

Speaks volumes about your priorities.

[kristopher]

14. I'm concerned about both; the question is why aren't you?

The question I have is why you aren't concerned about the paid propaganda and disinformation campaigns run against low information citizens by huge financial stakeholders?

Are you saying that the exact same actions by the tobacco (cancer) and fossil fuel (global warming) industries are acceptable also?

It is a systematic campaign to convince the public to accept by subterfuge what they would never accept as a result of open debate conducted through the normal scientific process. Such practice is the antithesis of honesty and truth.

[jpak]

11. Nuclear waste is *NOT* dangerous - name one person that has been killed by nuclear waste

Sound familiar?

[Nederland]

13. Touche

I think I know of whom you speak :)

Regardless, I think it's fair to say that most proponents of nuclear power recognize that nuclear waste is something that should be handled and disposed of properly.

[NNadir]

15. More to the point, we can name people killed by the paid (off) rhetoric of anti-nukes.

Let's have a picture of Amory Lovins taking his pay off from Walmart, the car cult, Asian diesel tanker company:



http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid419.php

Let's have a picture of the greenwasher with his SUV:



This is the anti-nuke industry at its worst, although one should probably include the dangerous paid (off) anti-nuke fossil fuel apologist Gerhard Schroeder in this pile of renewable dung.

In fact, although the anti-nuke cults are directly responsible for the <em>murder</em> of tens of millions of people around the world from air pollution, although their motives are to maintain the dangerous fossil fuel powered car cult that powers their useless and illiterate life style of conspicuous consumption, they have no shame about questioning the motives of any one who fails to buy into their illiterate dogma.

In fact, Dumbo, the number of deaths attributed to used nuclear fuel is zero, and in six years of coming here and announcing "world's largest solar installations" - funded by Mom's trust fund and her holdings in <em>energy stocks</em> you have been spectacularly unable to produce one death from the storage of used nuclear fuel.

In the same period there has not been one case where you or any other among your intellectually and morally bankrupt cult have given a rat's ass about the deaths from air pollution.

According to the World Health Organization, figures than zero anti-nuke fundies have ever bothered to reference, in 2002, air pollution deaths exceeded 2.5 million in a single year.

http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/countryprofilesebd.xls

Heckuva job fundie.

You must be very proud.

Don't worry, though, I'm sure your trust fund's "blind," especially about energy holdings, just as the rest of your cult's activities are "blind."