Posted on 05/24/2004 7:09:26 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON (AFP) -
Only nuclear energy can slow down the rapid and potentially devastating warming of the earth, a veteran British scientist and environmental campaigner argued.
"Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy," James Lovelock wrote in an opinion piece published in the Independent newspaper.
The 84-year-old is best known for fathering the "Gaia Hypothesis" in the mid-1960s that states the earth is alive and maintains conditions necessary for its survival.
Lovelock warned that environmentally-friendly energy sources were not being developed quickly enough to replace coal, gas and oil, whose waste gas -- carbon dioxide -- is at the origin of the so-called greenhouse effect or global warming.
"We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources, civilization is in imminent danger," Lovelock said in reference to renewables such as wind, tide and water generated power favored by most ecological advocates.
Lovelock also raised the alarm over the possibility of global warming moving at a faster pace than expected, as he recalled Europe's sizzling hot summer of 2003.
"If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from the overheating in Europe last summer," he said.
"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media," he charged.
"These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources," said the scientist, who has attracted ire from other environmentalists for his pro-nuclear feelings.
"Lovelock is right to demand a drastic response to climate change but he's wrong to think nuclear power is any part of the answer," British Greenpeace chief Stephen Tindal told the Independent.
"Nuclear (energy) creates enormous problems, waste we don't know what to with," he added.
Tony Juniper from fellow green group Friends of the Earth (news - web sites) echoed Tindal's position.
"Climate change and radioactive waste both pose deadly long-term threats, and we have a moral duty to minimize the effect of both, not to choose between them," he said.
A cow grazes on a field next to Sellafield nuclear plant in North England. Only nuclear energy can slow down the rapid and potentially devastating warming of the earth, a veteran British scientist and environmental campaigner argued.(AFP/File/Odd Andersen)
No, we need windmills.
Nuclear energy was the basis for the Kyoto Treaty--if ratified, the only way the US would get out of paying fines for the non compliance of other countries would have been if the US switched to nuclear power (just like France).
Too bad the mainstream media either does not know this or does not want you to know this.
This is just hillarious...after all the fear spread about Nuclear power. Maybe we could store the waste in Iraq.
France would be a better choice.
Try and get a nuke unit permitted. No utility has the stomach for such a fight. These days, they're selling off their generation, not adding to it.
I like that picture. I remember we were near Oxford and stopped at a place for lunch. The tour guide said the only thing included in the tour for lunch were baked potatoes. One apeice.
They were monstrous. And filled with stuff.
We remembered seeing a nuclear power plant a few miles back next to a farm and got veeery suspicious about where those potatoes were grown. :-)
If only we further decimated our economy they would looovve us.
As for nuclear power, let's hope this scientist doesn't wind up being 'disappeared'.
PEBBLE BED REACTORS (Google it) ARE THE ANSWER!
You could have one in the backyard!
BBQ at night is one benefit........
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I hope I have time for the two-week French Open before the collapse . . . |
No, we need about 18 quadrillion guinea pigs.
"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.This is so incredibly ironic. The inventor of the Gaia hypothosis tearing into the political hypocrasy of the left."I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.
"Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet."
I thought the problem was the cows and their, um, toots. Issue corks; problem solved.
You know, the same thought occurred to me, but then I realized that all those guinea pig farts would put us right back in the hothouse.
Windmills are not a primary power source. They have no "on" switch.
First I've never heard any valid science to suggest that fissil fuels cause that. Second, either way that fact or my belief therein has absolutely nothing to do with the validity or potential of windpower.
Windmills can be part of the mix however but it will be nearly impossible to convince private landowners to have them in their vista as the places where such machinery needs to be located is often near the location of vacation properties in the mountains and at the seashore.
This is a very very big country. Many people lose sight of that. A mere 5000 windmills located in the corner of Iowa could power all of Iowa at 39 TWHR per year plus or minus intermittancy which can be backfilled with hydro and coal. N Dakota could power the entire midwest easily except for lack of grid. You haven't considered the numbers quite as well as I have. BTW farmers love windmills as they get 2-5K per year per unit in lease money and still grow crops around them.
Such folks who have invested heavily in their property do not wish to see and hear windwills and you and I shouldn't blame them as they are indeed not a method to convert energy in an efficient way with respect to spacial characteristics, ie., it is not energy dense.
Density is a meaningless argument, cost and value and the environment are the important arguments.
Nuclear power will have to be the future if you believe in global warming, but I reject the premise so for me and many thinkers we should do what the marketplace orders and that is continue on the present course until alternatives become financially attractive to investors and hence, consumers.
Nuclear power is simply vile. Look at Chernobyl(sp)
Ah yes, Kyoto, the beginning of the euroweenies hatred of the cowboy.
If only we further decimated our economy they would looovve us.
And that was the gamble that the treaty's proponents waged.
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