Talk:Bill McKibben

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Contents 1 Photo of Bill 2 about the Luddite comment 3 "Luddite" reference and extra information 4 Copypaste 5 McKibben in National Geographic

[edit] Photo of Bill

The photo of Bill McKibben looks scary, and I don't think is typical of him. Can we replace or remove? Unnyn 20:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I replaced it. I retained the old image information in an HTML comment tag so it can easily be reincorporated if so desired. --Osbojos 18:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

SO mch better. Nice job! Jessamyn (talk) 05:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any photograph here. In any case, thanks for removing the former one. I put a request here -Unnyn 17:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] about the Luddite comment

I just removed these sentences: "...skeptical of technological innovation. Some would call him a luddite." While Bill McKibben is skeptical about completely unfettered technological innovation in areas such as human genetic engineering, he is by no means a luddite. He's an advocate of solar and wind power and he writes for an online magazine. Solar power and online magazines both involve technology. Here's an excerpt of an article (full version can be found here:

"The title of the book, "Enough," intentionally provokes the accusation of "Luddite." McKibben addresses this directly, and convincingly demonstrates the fatuousness of such attacks. He would not, for example, withdraw antibiotics or smash the computers. Instead, like Lander's outlook on germline therapy, he believes that we have reached a threshold, a turning point in which the decisions about some of the new technologies represent a radical break from the human project launched with the Enlightenment."

So McKibben used Luddism as a rhetorical device, nothing more. His opinion is a more nuanced than "technology is bad", which is the impression one gets from reading the previous version of the article. If someone wants to reincorporate the Luddite comment I'd appreciate it if they justified themselves on this talk page first. Thanks. --Osbojos 11:37, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Luddite" reference and extra information

Any Luddite reference takes a very non-neutral pov and seems quite inappropriate here, even if someone could argue for it. Meanwhile, it is difficult to find factual information about him. Bios tend to be very vague. But there is some material here: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/essays/mckibben.htm Some of this, such as his date of birth, might be appropriate to include. I'm trying to see whether I can paraphrase his actual arguments, but I may not be the person to try to do them justice in a short space since I'm actually rather unsympathetic. Metamagician3000 06:22, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copypaste

I notice that all or almost all of the material in the lead section of this article is identical to a page in McKibben's own website. --Belgrano 18:13, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Not only is the substance of the article taken directly from McKibben's own website, but the rest of the article consists of excerpts from his books:ie, the entry is completely generated by McKibben himself, so there's a question not only of originality but of objectivity. In fact, his books have received both good and bad reviews. The length of the entry seems disproportionate to entries for more recognizable authors.Rightword 13:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE has been directly copied and pasted from other sources, INCLUDING Bill's website. This is not appropriate and must be completely rewritten immediately, using original prose. Sinisterminister 14:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

from a quick skim of the edit history, this article seemed to have developed organically, rather than as a result of a copy paste. I think it's just as likely that McKibben's bio is copied from wikipedia. --Osbojos 15:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

In fact, I'm now sure McKibben's bio is lifted largely from this page, not the reverse. For instance I made a minor textual change in Feb 2006, where I replaced "writing includes a spiritual perspective" with "writing often has a spiritual bent"</a>. McKibben's page includes nearly the same distinctive language: "his writing sometimes has a spiritual bent." It should go without saying that I didn't make such a minor textual change just to make the wikipedia page conform more exactly with McKibben's official bio. In fact, according to archive.org McKibben's page didn't even contain a bio page with that language in Feb 2006. Personally, I don't care that he's using wikipedia text on his page, but technically he should be including the GPL/Wikipedia licensing information. Someone may want to follow up on that.--Osbojos 18:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] McKibben in National Geographic

After reviewing his recent article in NG I found McKibben to be less than a credible source on the topic of global warming. While he cites a modest amount of traceable reference data, he seems to avoid and omit critical facts that would be necessary to draw intelligent conclusions. For example, he sites the increase in carbon in the atmosphere, since we began to measure it, as being an increase from 280 ppm to 315 ppm and that it is increasing by 2 ppm per year. He allows the reader to conclude that this is entirely due to human activity. Quite frankly, I find that to be impossible. Additionally he proposes solutions to reverse this "human contribution" by listing lots of technologies and behavioral changes but never suggests that we ought to stop using fossil fuel to create energy. Curiously, he leaves out nuclear power entirely as an option that we ought to explore. Lastly he explores ethanol as a very acceptable technology but barely touches the tremendous effect that ethanol will have on our lifestyle, our cost of living and the environment. Having farmers switch to planting feed corn instead of beans, as an example (McKibben does acknowledge that this is happening), is going to going to have dramatic effects down the road. Additionally, as McKibben admits but does not elaborate, the competition for feed corn between ethanol producers and livestock ranchers is going to raise the price of feed corn through the roof. Eventually, ranchers will have to convert pastures into corn fields in order stay in business and beef will become a luxury.

I found this article to be lacking in facts but abundant in emotional alarms. It is not an objective critique. It is almost void of facts and plausible solutions to a problem that he poorly defines.

New data supports the notion that ethanol, and the "Mazola" economy it will create, are very slippery slopes for the US and other industrialized countries. The latest data, supported by private ethanol producers and oil/energy companies, says that it takes 27% more energy to produce ethanol than ethanol will yield. Additionally almost every ethanol manufacturer uses coal as the energy source to produce ethanol from corn. Lastly, ethanol reduces milage in all vehicles. Fuel milage drops by over 10%, and sometimes approaches 20% where ethanol is mixed with gasoline. Between the coal comsuption and the increased gas/ethanol comsuption, how is this a benefit to air quality and the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere? --Wfluri 19:44, 3 October 2007 (UTC)