Sociological Images

Given the events in Japan and the ongoing concerns about the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, I just wanted to point out that the New York Times has several very helpful images that explain the design of that type of nuclear reactor and what has happened over the last several days. The Union of Concerned Scientists has also posted several updates on their All Things Nuclear page.

The last decade or so had shown gradually increasing public support for nuclear energy. Just a year ago a Gallup poll of 1,014 U.S. adults showed the highest level of support since they first asked about nuclear power in 1994, with 28% saying they “strongly” and 34% saying they “somewhat” favor nuclear energy:

In November 2009, Ipsos MORI, a market research firm in the U.K., interviewed a representative sample of 2,050 people in Great Britain about their perceptions of the nuclear energy industry (at the request of the Nuclear Industry Association). Results of the question “How favorable or unfavorable is your opinion or impression of the nuclear energy industry?”:

Men viewed the nuclear industry more positively than women did:

Not surprisingly, the crisis in Japan has led to concerns about nuclear power in other countries; Germany, for instance, is at least temporarily shutting down all facilities built before 1980. There is likely to be increased scrutiny of older nuclear power facilities, in particular.

Sangyoub Park, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Washburn University, sent in this map showing the location and age of reactors in the U.S. (via the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission):

Though the current events in Japan would seem likely to decrease public support for nuclear energy, if the crisis at the Japanese nuclear facilities are contained with relatively little perceived harm, it’s possible we could see little long-term impact on public opinion. People might think that if a nuclear plant can be hit by an earthquake and a tsunami, suffer multiple explosions and fires, and not have a core meltdown, then they must be pretty safe. I’ll keep my eye out for polls on the subject over the next few weeks/months.

UPDATE: Sangyoub found a Gallup poll released this afternoon showing that the ongoing problems controlling the damage to nuclear reactors in Japan have increased public concerns about the possibility of a nuclear disaster in the U.S.:

This led to a dip in support for nuclear energy; the percent “somewhat” or “strongly” opposing nuclear power rose from 33% in 2010 to 38% now:

Related posts: the power of images in the environmental movement and Chernobyl, then and now.

Karma Japan and Ignorant and Online are new sites, featured at BoingBoing, dedicated to collecting tweets and Facebook status updates that suggest that the tsunami in Japan is karmic: pay-off for supposed Japanese sins.  The guilt ascribed to Japan ranges from their hunting and eating dolphins and whales and their bombing of Pearl Harbor especially, but also things like their rate of atheism and their politics.  But all have in common the notion that the Japanese deserve what has happened and that mother nature/God herself is against Japan and ensuring that the society is punished.  A fascinating peek into the minds of these Americans.

Trigger Warning: These comments are hateful and vulgar (and in pretty large font if you’re at work).

From Karma Japan:

The rest after the jump:

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I recently came across the guideline that was used to calculate how much money was to be paid out to the victims of the attacks on September 11. This was a fund that was set up by the US government partly because of the scale and the unprecedented nature of the September 11th attacks and partly to diminish the amount of lawsuits that the airlines would receive.

According to the New York Times article it goes as follows:

1. Economic loss.
2. Set amounts for pain and suffering: $250,000, plus $100,000 for each surviving spouse and child.
3. Subtract any life insurance paid.

Along with the rubric, The Times also included a chart that showed the amount of payouts that took place as of 2007:

Putting a price on a life is already a difficult concept to parse through. So I am not taken back that the people in charge actually found a price for each of the victims (some compensation had to be made for those individuals who now found themselves without the sole or part-earner in the household).

What I am taken back by is the stratification of how the payouts were dispersed. Who is to say a person makes no income is worth less than a person who makes 4 million and up? Who is to say females are worth less than males? Who is to say that food workers are worth less than individuals who work in finance?

I get the aspect that a person who was a blue collar worker or someone of no income will get less of a payout than a white collar worker or someone who was making $4 million based on the first guideline “economic loss”. But even that argument doesn’t hold much weight as that the food worker might be the next JK Rowling or that person of no income could be the next Bill Gates. Why would it not account for ability not yet realized? We are a meritocratic republic aren’t we?!

Even in a national tragedy like the attacks on September 11 we can’t seem to follow through on the belief that we are a classless society. These payouts are, unfortunately, the reality of the extreme stratification that we hide when we, as a society, claim that we are classless.

AFTER THE JUMP: STEVE GRIMES RESPONDS TO THE COMMENTS THREAD…

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Kristyn G. sent us a link from ABC News (as in Australian Broadcasting Corporation) where they have lots of photos illustrating the flooding in Queensland, Australia, last month, in case you were following that story. As you move your mouse across the photo, it toggles from before to after photos.

Fairfield:

Rocklea:

Bundamba:

There are many more at the ABC News website, and they really highlight the devastation in many areas — which had been experiencing a drought for years before this. A second set focuses more on close-ups:

Those are cows on the roof.

Rosalie Village:

According to the New York Times, about 25,000 homes and 5,000 businesses are flooded, and 25 people died. They’re expecting cleanup to take years.

The flooding is apparently the result of La Niña, a period of cooler-than-average temperatures in parts of the Pacific. It isn’t the first time Brisbane has flooded; it did so most recently in 1974:

Since then, the city has doubled in size. As a result, despite more flood control efforts, including building a dam to control the river, the damage was more extensive this time, because there are more structures and people to be affected. It’s a pattern we often see: more technology is put into place to protect against natural disasters, but increases in population and economic development lead to higher costs when those disasters do occur.

With 2010 coming to a close, I thought I’d post this image from i09, sent in by Peter N. It presents data on a range of changes between 2000 and 2010:

Have a happy New Year!

Lake Mead (1958):

Lake Mead (2010):

Via the Earth Observatory.

These two starkly different and somewhat frightening images don’t represent a linear diminishment of Lake Mead. Instead, they are two extremes on a naturally fluctuating water level:

This fluctuating water level isn’t, further, a natural problem. It has, however, become an increasingly social problem. It provides water for the Southwest, a portion of the country that has become thirstier and thirstier. From Maggie Koerth-Baker at BoingBoing:

Take, for instance, Las Vegas, which gets 90 percent of its water from Lake Mead. Back in the 1940s, fewer than 9,000 people lived there. In 2006, the population was estimated at more than 550,000, and growing. Rapidly.

This makes large numbers of people vulnerable to these natural fluctuations in ways that they never were before and potentially creates human disasters out of our own poor planning and resource management. If climate change exacerbates this problem, and it very well might, then the reliability of our water supply is even more fragile.

The Lower 9th Ward was one of the neighborhoods in New Orleans most seriously devastated by Hurricane Katrina. As a largely working class, black neighborhood, it was also one of the slowest to recover. State disinvestment, residents low on resources, and unscrupulous insurance companies made for a tough time finding the funds to re-build. The first photograph is of the Lower 9th five years after Katrina; the second, looking significantly worse, is of the region at the four year anniversary (source):

Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to an interactive graphic at NPR that allows you to virtually travel along Flood and Forstall streets in 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010 simultaneously.  You’ll see that many destroyed homes weren’t even demolished till years after the storm, and most new homes weren’t built until the last couple years.  Here is one screen shot: