Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Nuclear Energy

If Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, can support safe, relatively-clean nuclear energy, so can you.  Here are some more professors of climate science and the environment doing the same:
As conservation scientists concerned with global depletion of biodiversity and the degradation of the human life-support system this entails, we, the co-signed, support the broad conclusions drawn in the article Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation published in Conservation Biology (Brook & Bradshaw 2014).

Brook and Bradshaw argue that the full gamut of electricity-generation sources—including nuclear power—must be deployed to replace the burning of fossil fuels, if we are to have any chance of mitigating severe climate change. They provide strong evidence for the need to accept a substantial role for advanced nuclear power systems with complete fuel recycling—as part of a range of sustainable energy technologies that also includes appropriate use of renewables, energy storage and energy efficiency. This multi-pronged strategy for sustainable energy could also be more cost-effective and spare more land for biodiversity, as well as reduce non-carbon pollution (aerosols, heavy metals).

Given the historical antagonism towards nuclear energy amongst the environmental community, we accept that this stands as a controversial position. However, much as leading climate scientists have recently advocated the development of safe, next-generation nuclear energy systems to combat global climate change (Caldeira et al. 2013), we entreat the conservation and environmental community to weigh up the pros and cons of different energy sources using objective evidence and pragmatic trade-offs, rather than simply relying on idealistic perceptions of what is ‘green’.
No, I still don't believe that man is the cause of earth's climate change.  However, at least I can respect these people for acting reasonably on what they believe rather than relying on "idealistic perceptions" and civilization-destroying "solutions".

8 comments:

maxutils said...

I support nuclear power, as long as it's safe, at least relatively. I believe that we have a responsibility to take care of the planet, whether or not we can actually do anything meaningful in the long run; I believe we shouldn't put ourselves at an economic disadvantage to placate people who might be righ, especially when we could go zero emissions and not affect anything meaningful as the rest of the world takes advantage of us. Still--that doesn't mean we don't look for cleaner energy, including nuclear...

Darren said...

See? It *is* possible for us to agree!

maxutils said...

Yup. We do more often than not … I'm just more likely to post when I don't agree, because if I do, I often have little to add.

Anonymous said...

http://energyfromthorium.com/

Anonymous said...

i never knew people were able to believe whether or not facts were true...

Darren said...

Your "facts" are in reality your ideology. Please don't impose it upon me.

Anonymous said...

"Your 'facts; are in reality your ideology"
How hypocritical...
I meant-
how conservative...

Darren said...

Name-calling. *Nice*.