User talk:Rndm85

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Edit warring at Nuclear power

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Nuclear power. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. Please stop the disruption, otherwise you may be blocked from editing.

Your insertion, in edits such as this, of synthesis between separate sources goes against the guideline at WP:SYNTH. The source you supplied does not support your assertion that the preceding numbers are incomplete—it does not cite those preceding sources at all. Two such sources are about coal burning toxins, something not mentioned at all in Sue Sturgis's story about one guy's view inside Three Mile Island. Further up the section we find this source which is not cited by Sturgis either. Sturgis is a fine journalist but the scope of her story was not as large as you make it to be. Binksternet (talk) 03:41, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Binksternet - are you an admin? Don't abuse your Wikipedia status to promote a political agenda. FellGleaming has made 5 edits to my 3 edits. Only one of my edits was a reversion, the rest were partial edits in an attempt to reach a compromise. You have admitted in the talks section that you want the Wikipedia article to be biased. You wrote:

"I spoke very briefly in late February with Stewart Brand after he gave a talk on the subject of clean energy. He told me in answer to my question that he changed from being anti-nuke to 100% for nuclear power gradually, around 2000 or so, when he began looking further into the large-scale numbers that had been accepted as gospel by anti-nuclear people. He said to me of his protester days, "They cherry-picked statistics and didn't tell us the whole story." Brand is now convinced that nuclear power is the way forward, with solar, wind and thermal energy helping to fill a fraction of the full need. Nuclear power must be the main driver. The speech Brand gave delineated his thoughts on exactly that subject for an hour. It was inspiring! The problem of storage is not trivial but not impossible to solve. There are many great ideas that have been and can be employed. Working examples are legion; we cannot call it an unsolved problem. At any rate, this article should not be made to bend too far in the direction of anti-nuke. It should not give those voices the last word. Each entry of someone who talks against nuclear power should be countered by accurate numbers and authoritative figures. Binksternet (talk) 02:55, 4 April 2010 (UTC)"

[emphasis mine]

I am going to edit the article again, in a different way, in order to try to reach a final version that is balanced and agreeable to all. The article needs references to both sides of the issue. I have not deleted anybody else's references. This is not an edit war. Rndm85 (talk) 05:08, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I am not an admin, and I intend no abuse of status. Nuclear power is one of the rare issues where my perspective is colored: I was a big hater for many years, loathe to let nuclear power get any headway, but was recently convinced otherwise. After stating my position, I am still able to keep an article from breaking the WP:UNDUE guideline, from going too far in one direction. I have managed be pretty neutral so far on other articles—ones I have strong opinions about—I expect I will be able to so here as well. Binksternet (talk) 08:16, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

It sounds like you were impressed with Stewart Brand. He is a highly controversial figure. If you put a reference to him in the article, I wouldn't delete it, but I might balance it with another opinion. Stewart Brand is a charismatic speaker, but he is highly biased and seems overly utopian. The first problem is that he uses words intended to silence discussion like, "it is immoral to oppose genetic engineering." This is a ridiculous statement, because the exact same statement can be made from the other side. Brand doesn't take into account human nature. Many people are lazy and careless, and eventually problems will happen. For example, one cannot say that it is simply "immoral" to oppose genetic engineering, when at least one GMO organism was nearly released that had the capability to kill all plant life if it had happened to spread. [1][2]. Also, genetic engineering is not needed to solve the food problem. Most genetic engineering for food involves making farmers dependent on pesticides and genetically engineered seeds -- not increasing yield. I think that Stewart Brand is dangerously wrong on his anti-environmental opinions, though I wouldn't delete him as a reference if you added him to an article just because I disagree with him.

As far as nuclear power goes, human memory is very short. Imagine living in Europe 70 years ago during World War II. It would be nearly inconceivable that Europe would look like it does today within such a short period of time. Argentina was one of the 10 richest countries in the world just 80 years ago. It's quite different now. The world changes very quickly, and we can't expect the world to look the same within the next hundred years. As much as we try to prevent it, there may be more large wars in the future, where there is no stable government in places where there is currently nuclear power. Would you trust Somalia with a nuclear power plant and unmaintained, highly radioactive storage waste pools that have the potential to catch on fire? High-level radioactive waste is radioactive for thousands of years. Once a decommissioned nuclear power plant is not making money anymore, who is going to pay to maintain the waste sites for the next thousands of years? It's not going to happen. The world will not be the same in even 100 years. You should read a little bit more about the current state of nuclear storage in United States. It is already bordering on disaster. FellGleaming is adding technical information to the article and removing the human side, when the human side is where the danger is. All sides of the issue should be presented in the article. I'm not deleting anybody's references. I am just balancing the article. Rndm85 (talk) 02:47, 5 April 2010 (UTC)