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On Nuclear Energy and Global Warming

Here's Santa Clara University professor David D. Friedman:
Nuclear power is the one energy source that does not produce greenhouse gases and, using current technology, can be expanded over the next couple of decades to replace many, arguably almost all, uses of fossil fuel. So anyone who believes that the great threat facing us, the threat we should be willing to pay large costs to deal with, is global warming due to greenhouse gases should be strongly inclined to favor nuclear power.

[...]

I am sure there are people who are both seriously worried about global warming and in favor of nuclear power. But how many of them are there? How many high profile spokesmen or organizations have taken that position?
We know of a few. How about James Lovelock, Patrick Moore and Stewart Brand for starters?

Comments

DANIELBLOOM said…
Letters: The end of the world is nigh



Sunday, Mar 25, 2007, Page 8
In a recent Guardian article you ran about James Lovelock, the British expert on global warming ("It's the end of the world as we know it", March 18, page 18), it was implied that humankind is responsible for global warming and that it is already too late to do anything to reverse the impact it is having on life on Earth.

Lovelock says it is already too late to act to reverse the problems of global warming. Why? Because we are all addicted to our post-modern lives of cars, scooters, computers, airplanes, trains and ships, not to mention the thousands of coal-burning plants around the world that help fuel our addiction and pollute the planet. The huge carbon dioxide emissions faucet cannot be turned off.

While I am an optimist about most things in life, after reading Lovelock's books I have come to agree with him and now believe that humankind will cease to exist on Earth by the year 2500, or 3000 at the latest. I know this is not a popular thing to say, and it is just a personal opinion, but readers who are concerned about these issues can read my take on them at http://climatechange3000.blogspot.com, with feedback welcome, of course.

If there is any hope -- and we must hold to hope, despite the odds -- it is for leaders and visionaries to start planning now to build vast polar cities to house the future survivors of climate change in the hopes that their descendants can one day come out from the polar regions and repopulate the Earth. We should be listening to Lovelock, but most people couldn't be bothered. That's our problem.

Dan Bloom

Chiayi
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DANIELBLOOM said…
i changed my view. see here

http://climatechange3000.blogspot.com

forget the end of humankind thing. just focus on building polar cities. now.

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