Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Naomi Oreskes has accused climate scientists like James Hansen, who support the expansion of nuclear power, of practicing a “strange new form of denial”.
According to The Guardian;
After the signing of a historic climate pact in Paris, we might now hope that the merchants of doubt – who for two decades have denied the science and dismissed the threat – are officially irrelevant.
But not so fast. There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs.
Oddly, some of these voices include climate scientists, who insist that we must now turn to wholesale expansion of nuclear power. Just this past week, as negotiators were closing in on the Paris agreement, four climate scientists held an off-site session insisting that the only way we can solve the coupled climate/energy problem is with a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power. More than that, they are blaming environmentalists, suggesting that the opposition to nuclear power stands between all of us and a two-degree world.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/16/new-form-climate-denialism-dont-celebrate-yet-cop-21
This article was written in response to a demand by James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley to consider the nuclear option.
Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change
To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not prejudice. Alongside renewables, Nuclear will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them
All four of us have dedicated our scientific careers to understand the processes and impacts of climate change, variously studying ocean systems, tropical cyclones, ice sheets and ecosystems as well as impacts on human societies. We have used both climate models and geological records of past climates to better understand lessons from warmer periods in the Earth’s history and investigate future scenarios.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-the-only-viable-path-forward-on-climate-change
I can’t help feeling Oreskes has well and truly jumped the shark with the ridiculous claim that scientists like Hansen, Wigley et al are “deniers”, because they don’t believe in renewables. As WUWT reported a while ago, even Google couldn’t find a way to make renewables viable – so it seems unlikely anybody else will succeed where Google failed.
As for Oreskes objections to nuclear power, her argument that nuclear power is too risky is just plain silly. Even if the nuclear route to decarbonisation resulted in several meltdowns every year, how could this possibly be worse than the complete destruction of the biosphere through global warming, which according to the likes of Oreskes and Hansen is the price of continued reliance on fossil fuels?
The Revolution always devours its children; I suppose it is their turn to be munched now.
FD
“one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs.”
Well, they can’t. That much is obvious when one starts to do the industrial math. But here we get to one of the core problems with the CAGW movement. They are technology fetishists. They worship the windmill and the solar panel with absolutely no clue as to how they are made or how much they can provide, Even if we used up all the world’s minable rare earth mineral reserves just to make windmills, we’d still never come close to satisying the world’s current electricity consumption. I still want to know where they think all the electric cars they claim will replace all the petroleum-powered ones will come from and how the immense amount of additional electricity consumption those vehicles will require will be generated.
“She received her PhD degree in the Graduate Special Program in Geological Research and History of Science at Stanford in 1990.” – Wikipedia
“There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs.”
“Argumentum ad Verecundiam (argument from authority) fallacy: an appeal to the testimony of an authority outside the authority’s special field of expertise.” – Lander
One Warmunist fruitcake calling another Warmunist fruitbat a “d*nier; a delicious blend of irony and schadenfreude with my morning coffee. It doesn’t get any better.
Have you seen the lonely sportsman from a poor African country at the Olympics?
The one who never practiced and who almost sinks in the swimming pool, or can barely ski, etc. Some people find that touching. (Every time my mother wonders why she isn’t a the Olympics, as there are sports where she is really pathetic, too.)
That’s what I feel about Oreskes in hard sciences.
Because even the most vehement alarmists knows GW warnings are empty rhetoric. It’s smack talk, like when an action hero/villain threatens to punch someone to the moon. GW alarmism is not concerned with the biosphere, saving humanity or the rest of it, it is the temper tantrum of a child who wants their own way, because.
She has spent the last several years justifying her attack existence by pushing for what she just got from Paris. So now that she has her ends, how will she justify her existence going forward? Is she afraid she will drift off into insignificance? So to stay relevant in her own mind she’ll attack something else. It doesn’t matter what as long as it gets her some attention.
There is a method to the madness. She is angling for a major pay boost as a paid commentator at a major media group. The deal will involve just more of the regular tripe to a wider audience.
Nuclear was a hot topic until the Japanese earthquake took the steam out of it. Some of the nuclear plants sit in dangerous areas. I can think of several here in the US. Others sit in areas that I wonder about. In the middle of the US during the 19th century a similar earthquake would cause an unbelievable amount of damage. They are accidents waiting to happen. As far as I know the design failure that affected the plants in Fukushima are in ALL US plants. I do not know whether they are changing that flaw or sitting there with their fingers crossed.” If enough time goes by, it won’t be my problem. It’s off of my desk. ” and after the fact, there will be hand wringing, ceo’s stepping down, assurances that they now have competent mangement, and technically trained staff to handle the situation.
I don’t see renewables, if you can call them that, ( I’ve seen cost estimates that they cost more than they produce) taking over the heavy lifting of fossil fuels. The only other industry that has the potential to replace fossil fuels is fusion, and the greens are against that. Which in my mind, is puzzling.
If we weren’t bound by technical limitations, we could think of entirely new ways to generate massive amounts of power. It won’t be a scientist who thinks of it, it’ll be a sci fy type of person.
(The design flaw is the mechanical device that tells the operators that there is water in the reactor. Steam pressure pushed the lever to indicate that there was sufficient water in the reactor to keep it cool )
“…past climates to better understand lessons from warmer periods..”
And James et al, did you understand that these warmer periods were a blessing the humans and the biosphere at large? The two Naomis couldn’t fill a thimble with their actual knowledge. There political ideology takes up all the room in their brains for thought about anything.What is it that gives these two misanthropes such celebrity and weight? And the bigger question: what more experiment on centrally planned socio-econo-political management of people’s affairs do we need to assure ourselves that this is not the way forward? S’truth, when the asylum is taken back from the whackos, some heavy boilerplate needs to be added to constitutions – they were designed with the idea that more reasonable people would be running the show.
“Ever does evil turn against itself.”
Here is relevant Scientific American article from 213:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/russias-nuclear-reactors-could-take-over-the-world-safe-or-not/
Summary: “The federation is aggressively selling reactors to countries with little nuclear experience ”
to add: “…and useful idiots (like Naomi) help to undermine competition”
cgh
December 18, 2015 at 7:09 am
“Mostly rubbish. The Fukushima plant survived the earthquake quite well”
Nonsense!
Fukushima Dai-ichi #1 was smoking already before the tsunami hit. Several workers there have reported seeing buckling, cracking, hissing, leaking coolant pipes. In addition, even before the Mar. 11 event, there was concern at Fukushima about cracking pipes due to age, and wear & tear.
The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant. Each recites the same story: Serious damage to piping and at least one of the reactors before the tsunami hit.
[…]
In September 2002, TEPCO admitted covering up data about cracks in critical circulation pipes in addition to previously revealed falsifications.
[…]
Kikuchi Yoichi, a former GE engineer who helped build the Fukushima nuclear power plant says unequivocally that, “the earthquake caused the meltdown not the tsunami.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011vided pro/08/12/tepcos-darkest-secret/
What was released? Newly declassified US NRC report written just one week after the disaster sheds light on the extent of the catastrophe:
The source term provided to NARAC was 1) 25% of total fuel in unit 2 released to atmosphere 2) 50% of total spent fuel from unit 3 was released to atmosphere, and 3) 100% of the total spent fuel from unit 4 was released to the atmosphere.
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1212/ML12122A949.pdf
(page 7)
ENGINEERS IN Japan’s ruined Fukushima nuclear plant have revealed it suffered a triple meltdown in the four days after being battered by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11th.
The news confirms fears that reactor three, which contains controversial mixed uranium-plutonium fuel, known as Mox,… Mox is considered thousands of times more toxic than uranium nuclear fuel.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/fukushima-plant-suffered-triple-meltdown-1.581190
There is very much more, especially radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean from groundwater flowing over and through Fukushima Dai-Ichi, where location of coriums from three melt-downs remains unknown.
There is also a big question about the safety of, for example, Diablo Canyon NPP on California’s Central Coast, which sits virtually atop the Hosgri Fault system, recently discovered to be much more extensive than previously thought/revealed.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/11/28/faults-linked-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant/
But let me take a step back, and address the issue of nuclear power vis-a-vis the Great Global Warming Scare, sometimes known as CAGW, but now hiding behind various guises like “climate change,” and what have you. Many who read and comment here recognize that CAGW is bogus, on the one hand, but seeming fail to recognize one of the primarily beneficiaries, on the other.
If CAGW is bogus, and if CO₂ has been wrongly demonized, why is it again we can’t just burn cheap & abundant coal to generate all the safe and reliable power we all need?
Cui bono?
–sp–
To quote Oscar Wilde yet again; “You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.”
Hmm, ‘deniers’ used to refer to those who expressed the slightest disagreement with the notion that humankind has threatened our continued survival as a species by severely damaging the atmosphere. Now, in the wake of COP21 in Paris, it conveniently morphs into a label for those who express the slightest disagreement with the remedial prescriptions of self-appointed ‘progressive’ elites.
As Thomas Sowell said: “In democratic countries, where public opinion matters, the left has used its verbal talents to change the whole meaning of words and to substitute new words, so that issues would be debated in terms of their redefined vocabulary, instead of the real substance of the issues.”
The CAGW crowd uses these derogatory terms so often, the words become pointless. Kind of like the folks who use the “F-word” in every other sentence to get a reaction. Eventually it becomes background noise, signifying nothing.
‘Hansen is a Denier’ – I saw that coming!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/26/the-cult-of-climate-change-nee-global-warming/#1
Strikes me ,that the vitriolic hatred of capitalism has a rational root in Naomi’s world.
She is a well trained useless parasite. Sorry but that is self evident.
Now capitalism depends upon trade and providing a service useful to others, to establish your financial worth.
Parasites earn a negative rating in any sane capitalist system.
Hence a functioning capitalist system would expose far too many persons,currently staffing our kleptocracy, as less than useful to society.
Naomi has every reason to hate and fear capitalism.
Lysenko subject to Lysenkoism, irony continues to climb to dangerous levels.
‘Hansen is a Denier’
I am very late to this thread and few will read this comment. Oh well.
I would like to point out that James Hansen has always been a “Denier” as have most on the alarmist side and far too many on the “skeptical” side. Folks have been denying the method of science. The atmosphere does provide a warming or at least a modulating effect. That has been well known for a long long time. We started the denial of science when we decided to tilt the scales by calling the “atmospheric effect” as the “green house effect”. That was doing “science” by changing the definitions for a political reason.
We also allowed the alarmists to claim that if temperatures rose or fell then only CO2 could be the reason. WTF? Really?
But worst of all, folks on both sides refuse to question the very heart of the scam. Does CO2 even warm the planet or does it, on net, cool the planet? Certainly CO2 does cool the upper atmosphere and everyone I ever encountered was ok with that part.
But the biggest problem is that the alarmists and the luke-warmers can not even hold a decent debate on the facts as verses the politics of the matter. And the skeptics that hold that CO2 does not warm the surface at all (as verses the atmosphere which does have an effect) can’t even post in many “skeptical” parts.
Oh well. Someday when the CO2 delusion is over, we will get back to science I hope.
I love it when they start eating each other.
Bob Dylan is enough to make my oceans boil.
Attacking the source and ridiculing your opponent are logical fallacies that we are all familiar with.
But the same fallacies are happily exploited by the shameless nuclear fanatics who reject or ignore any evidence undermining the purity and safety of their carbon reduced fantasy.
================
Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima, Japan: 2011 to 2014.
Tsuda, Toshihide; Tokinobu, Akiko; Yamamoto, Eiji; Suzuki, Etsuji
[…]
Conclusions: An excess of thyroid cancer has been detected by ultrasound among children and adolescents in Fukushima Prefecture within 4 years of the release, and is unlikely to be explained by a screening surge.
http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/publishahead/Thyroid_Cancer_Detection_by_Ultrasound_Among.99115.aspx
=====================
On the very day of the tsunami, a gaggle of fanatics appeared on blogs to flood comments with a talking point about how nobody had died from the nuclear disaster yet, whereas dozens of Germans had recently died from eating tainted sprouts.
The message was clear: if you don”t die instantly from an event, it doesn’t count. Therefore, a nuclear power plant disaster must be safer than eating sprouts.
French pride for their nuclear industry led to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand.
I don’t see any credible “alarmists” saying that staying on a business-as-usual course will cause “complete destruction of the biosphere”. The worst I heard them claim is that the biosphere will reduce (not eliminate) the amount of land that is habitable by humans and the amount of food that can be produced. (I expect food production to continue to increase, especially if we accept GMO food).
Meanwhile – I support nuclear power, because it provides energy with no direct and little indirect greenhouse gas emissions, and it has a better worldwide safety record than coal. The better safety record is in terms of deaths or illness measure per amount of energy delivered, including what happened to coal miners. Coal and oil have also caused more environmental damage (climate change excluded) than nuclear – for example oil spills, strip mining, and “mountaintop removal”. Coal combustion for power generation is so greatly the main source of mercury pollution that replacing incandescent lamps 60W (actual power consumption) or more with CFLs (which have mercury) reduces the amount of mercury being transferred from the lithosphere to the environment – even if the CFLs are not disposed of properly. I wish Obama did not take any action to shut down construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which he has done. It seems to me that a “war on coal” requires acceptance of nuclear power, and disposal facilities for nuclear waste.
“That web site has articles relating to 911 Truthers, chem trails, San Bernardino Truthers, vaccines are poison type articles…basically everything which is widely believed to be true is derided as a hoax on that site.”
If Anthony Watts forbids discussion of several of those topics, none dare call it censorship, but it does undermine his credibility, methinks. What’s to fear about open discussion? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Logical Fallacies 101: Ad Hominem (Attack the Source)
http://stevencwatts.newsvine.com/_news/2011/02/15/6060912-logical-fallacies-101-ad-hominem-attack-the-source
I’m well aware of radiation hormesis; ‘had a long discussion about same with Kuhnkat on this forum in past years. And it’s no surprise to me because I bathe myself in radiation at odd intervals; it’s a very good source of Vitamin D, you know.
Now, I leave you with this:
An age is called dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
–James A. Michener
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