(Press-News.org) As America struggles down the road toward a coherent energy policy that focuses on a higher degree of self-reliance, policymakers face numerous issues and realities. These include: the finite supply and environmental impact of fossil fuels, the feasibility and costs to implement a widespread switch to renewable energy sources, and the variables that lead to consumers' preferences for particular types of power generation.
They also need to find and employ tools to effectively communicate such a policy to a range of constituencies.
When it comes to traditional energy sources, coal, with its attendant air pollution and link to global warming, and nuclear power, with the potential for radiation-spewing accidents, such as befell Japan's Fukushima's Nuclear Power Plant, remain two of the most controversial.
Professor Michael Greenberg, who studies environmental health at Rutgers' Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, and Heather Barnes Truelove, a postdoctoral fellow at the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment have researched consumers' attitudes toward these two energy sources. Both are members of the Consortium for Risk, Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP). Their recent article in the journal Risk Analysis examines Americans' risk beliefs and preferences for coal and nuclear energy, and finds factors other than global warming and the potential for nuclear power plant accidents figure into their choices.
The U.S. Department of Energy funded the 2009 landline telephone survey of 3,200 U.S. residents – 800 selected randomly and 2,400 who lived within six, 100-mile-radius regions containing many nuclear and coal-fueled electricity generating and waste management facilities. The study was to learn the association, if any, between some common risk beliefs about coal and nuclear energy and consumer preferences; if global warning and serious nuclear power plant accidents were the strongest risk beliefs associated with preferences; and the characteristics of "acknowledged risk-takers" who were aware of the sources' shortcomings yet wanted to increase reliance on them. The response rate to the survey was 23.4 percent.
The research followed an earlier survey by Greenberg that measured public preferences for various energy choices and their associations with respondent demographics and also trust, among other correlates. Due to widespread media coverage (and dramatized accounts) of global warming and the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, it was expected these two factors would be the "signature risk beliefs" about coal and nuclear power, respectively.
In the second study, the researchers investigated five sets of characteristics for respondents: age; the role of cultural, social and political identity; the effects of values about the environment and trust; respondent location; and risk beliefs about coal and nuclear energy.
Results from the total sample showed that about 25 percent of participants wanted to increase reliance on coal and 66 percent preferred to decrease dependence on it. The analogous proportions were 48 percent and 46 percent, respectively, for nuclear. Belief that coal use causes global warming, as expected, was related to preferences for coal, but, for example, ecological degradation was a slightly stronger correlate of coal-related preferences than global warming. With regard to preference for use of nuclear energy, there was a strong correlation with the possibility of a nuclear plant accident, but other risk beliefs, such as about nuclear waste management, nuclear material transport and uranium mining had just as strong or stronger relationships with preference for increased reliance on nuclear energy.
About 30 percent of respondents favored increased reliance on nuclear energy, despite admitting the possibility of a serious accident. About 10 percent favored greater reliance on coal, while acknowledging the fossil fuel's role in global warming. The strongest correlates of the two groups were socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity. The acknowledged nuclear risk-taker group was affluent, educated white males, and the coal group was relatively poor, less educated African-American and Latino females. The three consistent factors across both groups were older age, trust in those who manage energy facilities and the belief that energy facilities help the local economy.
The authors conclude their findings have a role to play in the formulation of a national energy policy because they show "one or two simple messages that attempt to persuade the public to change its preferences for or against specific energy sources are unlikely to succeed, especially if the public has a negative image of the source." More important, regardless of the existence of subpopulations with specific views about energy sources, "The United States needs a clear and comprehensive energy strategy that addresses the energy life cycle, beginning with securing the energy and transporting it, then to producing and transmitting the energy, and managing the wastes."
INFORMATION: END
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists using new mathematical and computational techniques have identified six influenza A viruses that have particularly close genetic relationships to the H1N1 "swine" flu virus that swept through the United States beginning in the spring of 2009. That virus eventually killed almost 18,000 people worldwide.
Biological studies focused on these strains of influenza virus could shed light on how the 2009 pandemic strain of influenza emerged, aiding in efforts to forestall another pandemic, the researchers say.
Five of these viruses were isolated ...
Alexandria, VA – In almost every way, the "Garden of the Gods at Colorado Springs" excursion at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) last year was a normal — even enjoyable — field trip. Standard geologic terminology was used in the accompanying field trip guide and the guides relied on orthodox geologic thinking to explain geologic features. But in reality, the trip was anything but a normal geology field trip.
Instead, as EARTH explores in its July feature "Creationism Creeps into Mainstream Geology," the field trip was an example of a new ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A protein previously thought not to exist in adult human lungs not only is present in normal and cancerous lung tissue, scientists have found, but it also has a major role in the development of a lethal complication of some lung cancers.
The protein, called the calcium-sensing receptor, sits on the surface of lung cancer cells that make up tumors known as squamous-cell carcinomas, according to new research.
As these tumors grow, the receptor releases a hormone that sets off a biological cycle that leads to the erosion of bone throughout the body. When ...
GALVESTON, Texas — More than a thousand years ago, somewhere in Southeast Asia, a fateful meeting occurred between a mosquito-borne virus that infected mainly monkeys and a large, susceptible group of humans.
The result: the world's first outbreak of dengue fever.
Today, dengue virus — which can produce high fever, excruciating joint pain and even death — has spread throughout tropical Asia, Africa and South America, and in 2008 it re-appeared in the Florida Keys. It could be even more widespread along the U.S. Gulf Coast but there is no surveillance in place to detect ...
Since the World Wide Web emerged in the mid 1990s scientists have dreamed of having the whole body of scientific peer reviewed literature freely available on the web, openly available without any hindrance. In the "Open Access" scenario each published article is just one mouse-click away from any reader worldwide, a model which is in sharp contrast to the established subscription system (whereby access is only provided to those people who are able to pay for an annual subscription), 'Open Access' removes any barriers to what many believe should be publicly available material ...
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago.
This prehistoric approach to metalworking was part of a metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts left behind by the Mississippians of the Cahokia Mounds, who lived in southeastern Illinois from 700 until 1400 A.D. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in May.
The researchers were able ...
What has made the Internet such a success could help change the way high-dollar and hazardous packages are tracked, according to Randy Walker of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Tracking 2.0, an ORNL system being developed by a team led by Walker, provides a clear start to finish view as an item moves to its destination, thereby eliminating the problem of proprietary and often incompatible databases used by various shippers. The system is the culmination of many years of research.
"Tracking 2.0 leverages eight years of ORNL research into supply ...
Many economists and sociologists have warned of the social dangers of a wide gap between the richest and everyone else. Now, a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, adds a psychological reason to narrow the disparity – it makes people unhappy.
Over the last 40 years, "we've seen that people seem to be happier when there is more equality," says University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, who conducted the study with Virginia colleague Selin Kesebir and Ed Diener ...
While several states have recently limited the ability for teacher unions to collectively bargain for their members, teachers will continue to flex their political muscle in a way scholars of policymaking have overlooked: through their pocketbooks, says a Baylor University political scientist.
Traditionally, the influence of teacher unions has been measured by the size of their membership or how active unions are in collective bargaining, said Patrick Flavin, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science at Baylor. But in a recent study, he found that teachers' unions ...
Lost your keys? Your brain might be in a better state to recall where you put them at some times than at others, according to new research from UC Davis. A paper describing the work is published June 13 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It's been assumed that the process of retrieving a memory is cued by an external stimulus," said Charan Ranganath, professor at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology. "But we found that the levels of brain activity before items came up were correlated with memory."
Graduate students ...
