NEI Nuclear Notes

James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Theory and a prominent pro-nuclear environmentalist was interviewed by the Guardian today. He was as provocative as always, and had this to say about Germany's planned phase-out of nuclear energy: "It looks to me as if the green ideas they have picked up now could be just as damaging. They are burning lignite now to try to make up for switching off nuclear. They call themselves green, but to me this is utter madness." How mad is it? Click here for a piece from Brad Plumer of the Washington Post .

This brought us up short: In Britain, environmentalist patron saint James Lovelock now tells the BBC he suspects climate scientists have "[fudged] the data" and that if the planet is going to be saved, "it will save itself, as it always has done." This comes from an op-ed by Wall Street Journal editor Bret Stephens (behind a pay wall, so transcribed by us) that takes the premise that global warming is a hoax. What Stephens means to say here is that Lovelock agrees with this. We think Stephens’s op-ed is utter tosh, as Lovelock might say, riddled with poor logic and a bad marshalling of facts. But we were interested in pursuing Lovelock’s current views and found, as usual, that parsing his words can lead to tears pretty fast. In a recent interview, he observed: The good skeptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favors. You need skeptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic."...

Over at Planetsave , Shirley Siluk Gregory, a self-described nuclear skeptic, has just finished reading James Lovelock's book, The Revenge of Gaia . Though she still has her doubts about nuclear energy, that didn't stop her from compiling 10 Green Arguments for Nuclear Power . Give it a look.

On the most recent edition of Science Friday , James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia Theory, talked about what the world can do to begin to constrain the emission of greenhouse gases. And as long-time readers already know, nuclear energy is one of those solutions. For more from Lovelock, check out our archive .

Visit Random Walker .

You gotta love this line of thinking : [L]ast night I curled up with James Lovelock's The Revenge Of Gaia instead of watching Live Earth. I'm pretty sure it was a much better use of my time. Read the rest right now .

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?

Over at Gristmill , the reflexively anti-nuclear David Roberts is upset that environmentalists like Patrick Moore, James Lovelock and Stewart Brand come out in favor of an expanded use of nuclear energy : An equally irksome tic is the notion that Brand represents some sort of next-gen environmentalism. There are basically three of these guys, these new nuclear proponents: Brand, Patrick Moore, and James Lovelock. Every story about one of these guys -- and there are plenty -- tries to spin the next-gen angle. Finally environmentalists are letting go of their old ideas, right? But I don't see anything new here, much less any brave new environmentalism. I see three guys approaching their twilight years, worn down from a lifetime of fighting, making a desperate bet based on fear. As someone who just saw An Inconvenient Truth for the first time a few weeks ago, I had to laugh when I read that last line. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. There's a lot that's just plain wrong...