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
quote :
Tucci78 says:
July 4, 2011 at 12:48 am
Hearing any ‘viro seriously examining The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (Petr Beckmann, 1976) is encouraging.
Who cares what his religious beliefs about anthropogenic carbon dioxide (aCO2) are supposed to be? If he can demonstrate a capacity to think rationally about nuclear fission, it’s proof sufficient that even the clinically brain-dead can be resuscitated.
/quote
what few seem to realise is that this exactly why we have the CO2 AGW myth in the first place. It is a final desperate attempt by the nuclear industry and their stooges in in government to make NP appear economic by inflating fossil fuel costs by creating a carbon tax.
Nuke has never been economic without subsidy in one form or another: Now they need to set up ficticious AGW tax to rig the “free” market.
Monboit and number of greenies seem to be swallowing it hook line and sinker.
one more fro australian greenies
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-07/04/c_13965032.htm
this will hurt them big time
onion says:
July 4, 2011 at 1:22 am
“…This industry seriously needs to clean up its act. That means complete transparency with the general public. TEPCO and the Japanese Government engaged in months of lying over Fukushima.
And Lynas’ endorsement – someone who has demonstrated spectacular failure of judgement in the past – should not be cause for celebration. It should strike fear into any supporter of nuclear power.”
Spot-on Onion! There are many incidents each year at nuclear plants around the world which we never get to hear about either because they were successfully dealt with or the radiation hazard wasn’t at levels noticeable by the public. Until we have all the facts about the risks, it isn’t possible to arrive at a logical conclusion on the further development of nuclear power generation – transparency is paramount.
Like you, I think Lynas has little credibility and neither do our politicians. Until more is known I think new coal and gas power stations are the safest option for the foreseeable future.
Quote from the article:
“Surprisingly, nuclear power may be be more environmentally friendly than many types of renewable energy…”
Nope. Desastrously false. Ask the now-homeless people who lived near the Fukushima nuclear plant at times of the Tsunami. They would exchange their experience with nuclear power for a host of wind turbines at the horizon every day.
Think – then talk.
izen says:
July 4, 2011 at 1:23 am
@- “Our environment and energy problems are solvable — but can be tackled effectively only with pragmatism, rather than ideological wishful thinking. ”
This sensible admonition applies to both ‘sides’ of the debate.
Both to the green zealot who claims that equatorial temperatures will rise to fatal levels and sea level will flood most of the inhabited coastline in less tha a century.
And dismisses anything but a return to stone-age hunter-gathering societies as ‘unsustainable’.
AND to the rejectionist dogmatic that in the face of overwhelming scientific aggreement still asserts that the CO2 rise is not a problem, despite the fact that it is a bigger impact on the atmosphere than a Yellowstone super-volcanic eruption each month when it comes to CO2.
Alas, izen, your belief in Science-by-Consensus, in “overwhelming scientific agreement”, and your comparison of manmade C02 to the destructive violence of super-volcanos going off every month shows you to be an ideological zealot who is immune to reason or rationality.
Lynas’s “about-face on nuclear is merely a tactical one. I’d trust him about as far as I could throw him.
Ooops…. found the article on page 28. The picture of Gaddafi on the adjoining page distracted me. Not exactly a conversion for Mark Lynas but at least a step in the right direction.
He’s still a fool, BUT there is very good news in this story! This will set two factions of the Greens at each other’s throats in an ideological purity war. Now, the ones like Lynas will eventually lose and be driven out of the movement – he’s not quite crazy enough to be a true Green anymore. But along the way their fighting should do a great deal to tear apart their movement from the inside.
And we are at a state of the world now where *anything* bad that happens to the Greens is good news for us!!!
BTW This could be important! (or not) probably well worth investigating further especially CA
http://www.teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=f624c8f9-4767-438b-a476-32682f437180
At the end of the day, the greens will have been a 50 year speed bump on the road to nuclear power.
This is a surrealistic nightmare in some kind of parallel universe.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it Margaret Thatcher that started down this path in the 70’s / 80’s?
jazznick says:
July 4, 2011 at 12:40 am
Let’s not get carried away here. This guy still ‘believes’ CO2 is a problem when it clearly is not.
Jazz don’t knock it, the nuclear message is the important thing.
Believing CO2 (plant food) is amusing; building windmills to try solve the non problem is a disaster, both economic and environmental.
Green zealot giving special dispensation for nukes? But still spreading the gospel of CAGW?
The only society where genuine conservation can be practiced is a rich, highly developed and chaotically capitalist world making abundant use of petrochemicals and burning lots of coal – which things will never peak or run out, but be replaced by something better. It is not a society or economy that can be “modeled”…which is why it works.
In such an untidy society, full of surprise but dominantly middle class with naturally modest population growth, genuine conservation can and will be practiced in earnest. The rest is cant.
jazznick says:
July 4, 2011 at 12:40 am
Let’s not get carried away here. This guy still ‘believes’ CO2 is a problem when it clearly is not.
correction
Jazz don’t knock it, the nuclear message is the important thing.
Believing CO2 (plant food) a problem is amusing; building windmills to try solve the non problem is a disaster, both economic and environmental.
Does a leopard change its spots?
The answer is NO!
Mark Lynas appears to have made WUWT become somewhat dew-eyed, and the article in the Daily Mail is interesting reading to be sure.
But……with the likes of George Monbiot bigging up nuclear with the scary/hilarious “Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power” and now Lynas, one remains extremely wary of these cameleons, both now openly displaying the ‘kings shilling’ in the bottom of their ale mugs.
As John L Daly noted in his 1988 book The Greenhouse Trap, he had the suspicion that the Chernobyl disaster & assent of the Global Warming Scare were not mere coincidence. In his eyes, the Global Warming Scare was the attempt to rehabilitate the nuclear industry; a
long game which – post-fukushima – appears to be in serious trouble again.
Now that AGW is effectively trumped, the likes of Monbiot & Lynas have no alternative but to leave the long grass & display their spots in the open savanna.
Don’t be so ready to welcome shills into the fold…..the ‘boy who cried wolf’ was eaten & I -for one- don’t like the idea of a revisionist Aesop.
Daly was right.
Admitting he has been wrong but just cannot bring himself to admit he gets it all wrong!
Lynas is simply a hack on the same low level as Monbiot and is not to be trusted. The only thing that has changed is the fact that Greenpeace followers now distrust him more than we do and will gang up on him.
Nickel is the new Green. (Believe it or not. At least, I have never been offered a Nickel Credit Card…)
No, seriously folks, fusion energy is here, and will be well known late in October, 2011. See
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3179019.ece (This is not a pump n dump)
Why in the world does that article have a photo of cooling towers with the caption:
I guess once they’re done banning carbon they’ll realize the alleged CO2 they were so worried about was actually water vapor, and since that’s a greenhouse gas too, then they’ll get to work on banning water, or at least they will try for as long as they can hold their breath.
I agree with Grumpy. A sinner repenting is a Good Thing.
Readers outside the UK may not appreciate the significance of Lynas publishing this in the Daily Mail. The Mail is viewed with complete loathing by the Left and the Greens….as a written embodiment of a combination of both Bushes, Mrs Thatcher and Hitler – all having bad hair days.
For Lynas to publish there at all is an apostasy of great weight…to espouse nuclear power there is blasphemy and heresy beyond belief. He will not be on Greenpeace’s Xmas card list ever again!
The industrialized countries are so focused on greenhouse gasses, by which they mainly mean CO2, yet nobody seems to care how much CO2 was emitted by the recent volcano eruptions in Iceland. Those eruptions may have swamped any human reduction efforts for several years.
I can only ask, what is at work when the only factor in the popular media and public policy deliberations is how much CO2 that human activity emits, yet there is no concern over natural emissions? Clearly this is NOT about CO2 at all, but about squelching our prosperity and liberty.
The CO2 meme will be eradicated over the next years as climate fails to follow the computer models and Arctic ice cycles upwards.
The immediate serious threat to our economies comes from the Alice in Wonderland world of our politicians and their drive for renewable energy.
Any ‘green’, especially a relatively prominent one, who realises the futility of wind and solar should be welcomed with open arms.
His endorsement of Huhne’s statement that nuclear electricity is needed to “get off the oil hook” reveals how little he and most enviros understand about energy. In the US at least (I’m assuming it’s roughly the same in the UK) petroleum products are not burned to produce electricity, except in minor amounts for diesel generators, peaking and startup turbines when natural gas isn’t available and occasional purchases of otherwise unusable resid for power plants. Oil is far too expensive. The overwhelming use of oil is for vehicle fuel – gasoline, diesel, jet fuel – for planes, trains, automobiles, trucks and boats, and secondarily for furnaces that heat homes and commercial buildings. Going 100% nuke or 100% wind or solar would do virtually nothing to get us off the oil hook. By and large, we don’t import oil to make electricity, and we don’t use electricity to power vehicles. There’s little intersection between the two.
What about THORIUM power production Mark?
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/thread-905.html
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/thread-1167.html
Physical safety issues aside – – how can anyone remotely guarantee the POLITICAL safety of a nuclear waste site for, say, a mere 10,000 years? Every nation on earth has experienced civil wars, revolutions, coups, and military occupations – even jolly, old England had its brutal Civil War in the middle 1600s. And what, exactly, were humans doing 10,000 years ago? I’m sure they were imagining i-phones and Priuses.
To suggest that we could even remotely understand the complexities involved in long-term storage – let alone guarantee its safety is laughable.
onion says:
July 4, 2011 at 1:22 am
Until nuclear power is privately insurable, …
How much will Fukushima cost to clear up? Nebraska?
There’s nothing radioactive to clean up at Ft. Calhoun. Nothing. The plant is safely shut down and all its systems are working properly. Flood clean up at Ft. Calhoun will not be much different than it will be for the tens of thousands of people up and down the Mississippi, Missouri and Souris Rivers who’ve been flooded this year. How about “Until flood insurance is privately available, people shouldn’t be allowed to build in flood plains…”
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110627/NEWS01/706279901/1101#flood-test-not-over-for-nuke-plant
Doc Watkins is right. The green shift has already gone to energy and away from AGW. They don’t even argue AGW any more (it is settled, you see).
My sense is that nuclear energy is going to be the door that many AGW types use to walk away from AGW policies. They have no other avenue by which to leave the movement, and like all cults, one doesn’t challenge the central meme, but splinters from the edge of the belief system. Nuclear energy offers that.
As well, many AGW types are, at heart, true environmentalists and they see traditional environmental issues being sacrificed on the alter of AGW and it’s minor alters of wind power and solar power. I am seeing opposition to “biofuel” as well, based on the amount of land needed to generate sufficient fuel to become a rival to fossil fuels.
The way out for those who care most deeply about conservation of ecosystems is going to be nuclear. Expect more defections.