Global Warming? Blame Jane Fonda

If you're wondering who's largely to blame for the alleged heating up of the climate you need look no further than Jane Fonda.

That's what "Freakanomics" columnists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt suggest in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

"If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?" the authors ask.

According to Editor & Publisher, the two cite Fonda's anti-nuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, as helping stoke "a widespread panic." Fonda, E&P notes became a high-profile anti-nuke activist in an already-strong movement that resulted in the nuclear industry halting plans for expansion.

"And so," the authors continue, "instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today such plants account for 40 percent of the country's energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Anyone hunting for a global-warming villain can't help blaming those power plants -- and can't help wondering too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda."

Despite Fonda's anti-nuke campaign, the columnists say that the "big news" is that with global warming fears mounting, "nuclear power may be making a comeback in the United States," with plans for two dozen reactors on the drawing boards.

"Will they get built?" E&P asks, explaining that "It may all depend on what kind of thrillers Hollywood has in the pipeline."

Neither E&P nor the Times columnists bothered to note that all those CO2 emissions contribute a barely measurable part of the greenhouse gasses present in the atmosphere. According to Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology, called by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world: "There’s been warming over the past 150 years, and even though it’s less than one degree Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the 'greenhouse effect,' various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.

"Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor ...

"And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide."

Not sure what you mean by “this”. If it is what was said about global warming and water vapor, etc., I would say it is pretty accurate. Whether Hanoi Jane had any real effect on America abandoning nuclear energy, that’s debatable, since we would have no way of really determining that.

I think the accident at 3 mile Island itself was more than enough, but, Jane’s movie may have had a hand in stirring the pot, so to speak.

The only thing I saw in the article that was questionable was that the article seemed to be suggesting the two dozen plants are a done deal.

I think the real number is 29 and of that number all projects are still tentative and a lot of variables and factors will need to be worked out.

They will find those that think nuclear power is safe, but not in their neighborhood, so there is that. The fact that we are post 9-11 will be a major factor. What if someone crashes an airplane into a nuclear facility? Then they have to agree on the type of nuclear plant to build.

Do they want to use reclamation technology and a fast breeder reactor or not? If it is a fast breeder reactor then the fuel will be converted to Plutonium (weapons grade) and that would be a definite security concern.

If they don’t utilize reclamation and recycle the spent fuel then there is the problem of the nuclear waste. So if they don’t use reclamation then there will be a lot more waste going to Yucca Mountain.

If all that isn’t enough they are having a hard time selling nuclear power to Wall St. If they can’t get the initial investment the point is moot anyway. So yeah, any plans are tentative at best.

So there seems to be a lot more than Jane Fonda that is halting nuke plant proliferation. Something goes wrong with a nuke plant you have some serious contamination. Burning hydrocarbons as fuel releases Co2 into the atmosphere, which is essential to life. So if I had a choice I would go Hydrocarbon till a better, safer energy source comes along.

Global Warming, in my opinion, is just a big hoax and I give it very little credence.

When a nuclear survey crew went in with robotic cameras to survey the actual damage to the TMI Reactor a few years ago, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The meltdown was actually much more extensive than they had expected. It came within a few feet of actually escaping containment.

For a long time they thought that the damage was not that bad, and that it was well contained. But that’s not the case. Those old style reactors are too dangerous to use, and the incident at Chernobyl was even worse.

Not that nuclear power is all bad; we just don’t need to build anymore of those old style reactors. The Pebble Bed reactors that China is building can’t melt down because it’s physically impossible for them to. That’s the way we should be moving.

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