Skip to main content

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
This story has been viewed 418 times.
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.

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin