This is in the UK Daily mail today, and it’s like sacrilege to the greens to have one of ther own say this:
This sums it up, he writes:
Our environment and energy problems are solvable — but can be tackled effectively only with pragmatism, rather than ideological wishful thinking. And the litmus test for that may well be the issue of nuclear power.
h/t to Barry Woods
In some ways his position is morphing into that of Bjorn Lomborg, whom Lynas famously pied in the face. Perhaps we ought to send Lynas some pies…
Anyone who still believes CO2 is a problem is still very confused
But agree with him on nuclear. Especially if the world moves down the 4th generation route. Or plants to use old nuclear waste like the prism plant. Nuclear waste is really a very valuable unused fuel.
Well…he’s partly right.
So this guy was able to understand, per kWh produced, nuclear power is safer than any other form of bulk electricity generation, and thus that there’s no empirical evidence for the charges that nuclear power is unsafe – but he’s unable to understand that there is no empirical evidence to substantiate the AGW thesis, and thus that human-produced CO2 poses no threat whatsoever.
‘E’ for effort. Thumbs up for making it half-way to reason, I suppose, but it takes some serious brain damage to be able to reach such a mutually inconsistent conclusion.
It doesn’t matter how sharp the bend but the fact that he is bending. A lot of people see him as a policy leader so some will follow him around the curve. It’s all good.
Mark Lynas is parroting the official establishment lines, and his views exactly match the current views of his national governmnent. What a surprise.
Now there’s a UHI effect to jump up and down about too, it seems.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2011/jul/03/temperature-heat-climate-london
Must be more lies from Green zealots
Yes, he’s Partly Right. Which is a massive improvement on Totally Wrong.
It takes time to admit your mistakes. There’s so much humble pie to eat…
As I have stated before, the likes of Monbiot and Lynas may turn out to be unlikely allies, at least give them credit for thinking outside the Green square.
Eventually we will have to replace fossil fuels with the next best alternative. Whether a skeptic (I am) or a believer, the solution is the same: replace fossil fuels with nuclear.
For anyone that doesn’t know UK green politics and environmentalist thinking
For him to write in the Daily Mail is sacrilege alone….
For Mark To write in the Daily mail; Green zealotry and don’t belive in the Green LIes, is the ultimate heresy..
The greens wil no doubt react in such a negative reactionary and abusive way to this, that any member of the general public and the ‘brighter’ politicians will start to question anything the greens say.
Have any of you pro nuclear people ever tried to finance one? Nightmare, because of the high capex alone. And why would you when there is a predicted boom in shale gas and China is just putting its first shale gas licences out for bids. And seeing as we need gas fired generation to cover the inefficiency and inadrquacy of windpower, why not just go primarily for gas fired generation for now? Nuclear from 2030?
In the Daily Mail article there is a picture of cooling towers belonging to a power plant, either coal or nuclear. This text is below the picture “Pollution: Man-made carbon emissions is contributing to climate change”
Cooling towers are not polluting or emitting any carbon. The “smoke” from them is pure clean steam. Nothing else.
Whose Mike Lynas?
Heh! I thought this was in today’s paper! Not so.
I guess I will read all about tomorrow.
He says Huhne has seen the light? That would be an even more implausible miracle.
Nuclear is pretty expensive up front. The UK would be far better off putting the same resources into coal and frak gas. Much more bang for the buck. And a much heftier contribution to fighting the CO2 famine.
He might still be a believer, but is starting to think like a rational human rather than an alarmist. Once rational thinking takes hold, discarding of all ridiculous beliefs is not far off. Once rational thinking clears cloudy thinking, and evidence and results based reasoning takes over, it won’t take long. The only difficulty for someone like this is a way back out of the mess while saving face and not getting thrown under the bus by former ‘friends’.
Perhaps Lynas might care to dissociate himself from Greenpeace for starters. I mean they’re running the show at the mo. I mean even Lomborg was member until he rumbled them and had the guts to publish.
the watermelons are responsible for much of the world’s problems…..not solving them, but causing them.
Roger Pielke analyzed nuclear power, and if the greens had allowed only the nukes that were proposed to come online, US CO2 emissions would be at levels not seen since the 1950s.If that rate had continued, then US emissions would be at levels not seen since the 1930s. of course, concurrant air pollution would also be similarly reduced.
If greens allowed DDT, 10s of millions now dead, would still be alive.
If greens had not stopped all forest fires, then floor fires would have encouraged a healthier forest, with less pine beetles and less massive fires.
Even in the matter of bedbugs, if the greens had not banned the popular pesticide used (Dursban), then there would not be a boom in bedbug infestations.
and the beat goes on….
Thats the trouble with the Titanic, you either jump or wait for it to sink and I think Mark maybe putting his head through a life jacket.
It’s too little, too late… Hardly worth mentioning really! His missive still has the fundamental AGW error at its core.
Total tosh! I’m sorry but birds and bats die in a huge variety of ways and wind turbines would account for a tiny proportion of wildlife deaths. To use this as an arguement to support a tecnology which basiscally leaves a radioactive footprint for hundreds of years is pretty poor. And so what if solar takes up alot of space – so do houses and roads. We’re in it up to our necks anyway, so let’s use roof tops and roadsides for solar panels.
The AGW arguement is dead in the water anyway but the energy independance issue is where it’s really at. In which case, I would prefer honestly to see a combination of coal plus renewables than the nuclear nightmare.
And no sooner than this story praising French nuclear, guess what?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/04/french-nuclear-power-plant-explosion-safety-fears
Bad timing, or what? FYI- I am all for nuclear power plants, and have lived near them all of my life (Miami, Savannah)
So Lynas admits he was a lying green zealot. Hhuhhh???
While I have a pragmatic attitude to nuclear power I am not inclined to despise people who do not. This whole Lynas thing looks suspiciously like a fanatic changing his spots and fanatics of any colour I don’t take seriously.
What Lynas doesn’t get s that its not what he believes … which seems to charge with remarkable rapidity ….. but HOW he believes. He just has to drop words like ‘belief’ etc … and start to accept uncertainty and the possibility of other things.
I don’t suppose the news that gas prices are going to rise nearly 20% this year has led to Mr Huhnes “eureka” moment ?
Building new nuclear on existing sites gets around the planning, unlike starting drilling for shale gas….and the greens are SO good at stalling planning permissions.