Kicking around the blogs today is this even-tempered quote from environmental journalist David Roberts:
Taking Roberts' thinking to its logical conclusion, what should we say about folks who cheer the elimination of nuclear energy from the global energy grid, and propose replacing it with renewable sources of energy that perform at their worst when demand is at its highest?
Don't forget, when the temperature rose in California, there were a number of people who didn't run their air conditioning because the cost of electricity was too high -- and now we know the results.
And as renewables are not a serious option when it comes to displacing baseload power, that means more coal-fired electric generation in a country where 30,000 people a year die from respiratory diseases caused by pollution from coal-fired power plants, and another 2 million per year worldwide are killed by air pollution.
The bottom line is this: These are serious issues and the decisions we make will have massive economic and social impacts around the globe, including, undoubtedly, ones that we cannot foresee. Comparing the people who disagree with you to war criminals does nothing to move us closer to resolving these issues, and doesn't do much credit to the cause that Roberts represents. For his defense of what he wrote, click here.
UPDATE: Roberts has retracted his call for Nuremberg trials. Good for him.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Electricity, Environment, Energy, Natural Gas, Oil, Climate Change, Global Warming, GHG, Grist
When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.Here at NEI Nuclear Notes, we're not climate scientists, so we don't comment on climate science. We simply say the same thing over and over again: That if you want to continue to generate reliable and affordable electricity while constraining greenhouse gas emissions, you need to have nuclear energy as part of the world's energy mix. We're not the only ones who think this way.
Taking Roberts' thinking to its logical conclusion, what should we say about folks who cheer the elimination of nuclear energy from the global energy grid, and propose replacing it with renewable sources of energy that perform at their worst when demand is at its highest?
Don't forget, when the temperature rose in California, there were a number of people who didn't run their air conditioning because the cost of electricity was too high -- and now we know the results.
And as renewables are not a serious option when it comes to displacing baseload power, that means more coal-fired electric generation in a country where 30,000 people a year die from respiratory diseases caused by pollution from coal-fired power plants, and another 2 million per year worldwide are killed by air pollution.
The bottom line is this: These are serious issues and the decisions we make will have massive economic and social impacts around the globe, including, undoubtedly, ones that we cannot foresee. Comparing the people who disagree with you to war criminals does nothing to move us closer to resolving these issues, and doesn't do much credit to the cause that Roberts represents. For his defense of what he wrote, click here.
UPDATE: Roberts has retracted his call for Nuremberg trials. Good for him.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Electricity, Environment, Energy, Natural Gas, Oil, Climate Change, Global Warming, GHG, Grist
Comments
"Unbelievers! ... Kill the heretics! Kill them! Persecute! Kill! ..."
Sadly, it is all too easy to come across examples of this type of extreme rhetoric (whether retracted or not) on the "warmers" side of the climate change debate.
Environmentalism, as practiced by many groups out there, really has reached the point of being a quasi-religion, particularly when it comes to climate change or anti-nuclear activism. Their positions on many issues are entrenched to the point of being dogma, and their arguments really have to be taken on faith by their followers because either -- as in the case of nuclear energy -- their arguments are so ridiculous and easily discredited by a critical examination of the facts or -- as in the case of climate change -- the pertinent issues are so technical that only specialists are able to realistically grapple with and understand the evidence.
Thus, there are many out there who blindly chant the mantras -- "No New Nukes!" or "Global Warming is real!" -- with sincere belief, but without any genuine understanding of the real underlying issues. This in itself is scary enough, since it is difficult to nearly impossible to counter belief with fact; however, the tendency for those caught up in this evangelical fervor to demonize all those who do not share their beliefs is truly concerning.
In the case of global warming, the attacks appear to be substantially more personal, and refutation through blatant character assassination is a common tactic that is used against the "deniers." It is not unusual to find criticisms of anthropogenic global warming to be dismissed by calling the author an "oil-industry shill" rather than actually debating his arguments (which is unfortunate, because there are many false claims and misrepresentations of the facts floating around on both sides of the debate). And here we see what the warmers have in store for "shills"; they'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Fortunately, the nuclear industry has been spared much of these very personal attacks, with most of them being reserved for people such as Patrick Moore, where we can witness the hate and fury directed at those individuals from the movement who do not keep in line with the rest of the flock. Nevertheless, there remains the underlying sense expressed by anti-nuclear groups (particularly at rallies, protests, and hearings) that those who work in the industry have sold their souls to an evil corporate empire and would willingly sacrifice all decency and morality to keep their jobs. Some anti-nuclear activists are more direct and vocal about it than others. For example, Dr. Caldicott is apparently not afraid to claim that those who work for nuclear power are in league with the devil.
If that's not taking things to the point of religious belief, then what is?
From those you who are reading this and are not yet "believers," all I ask is that you do not take anything on faith. Instead, investigate for yourself the claims of both sides and learn as much as you can. Think critically and dismiss the ridiculous. You will then be much better equipped to make an informed decision and less likely to fall into the trap of narrow-minded extremism.
"What I want is some sort of public forum where the liars can be exposed for what they are and cast, once and for all, from polite company. "
There is one. It's called the World Wide Web and it's a bloody good forum. You can't complain about that one just because it isn't state controlled.
I don't know how things are in America, but over here, trying to claim that the likes of Exxon-Mobil are confusing the public about this issue would be pretty weak given that the media - and the politicians - have unanimously decided that they're evil.
And from one of the comments:
"I only said there should be something LIKE Nuremberg, i.e., an international tribunal investigation wrong doing. "
This is trying to have your cake and eat it too. If the Nuremberg analogy drew criticism for its appeal to execution of Nazis, then maybe it would make sense not to make such analogies. Roberts picked Nuremberg for his example, when he could have picked thousands of others. You can't complain about straw man tactics when critcs take your analogy to its logical conclusion.
My reductio ad absurdum would be this:
Person A: I think parents should spent more time playing with their children, like paedophiles.
Person B: What? You want parents to sexually abuse their kids?
Person A: No, no. That's such a straw man! I only said LIKE paedophiles... as in spending time playing with their children.
Anyway, I think Eric is on to something. If we can try people for speaking out against global warming theory, because they are threatening actions to deal with, we should, taking this to its logical conclusion, be able to do the same to those who speak out against nuclear power.
Perhaps a real debate must involve bringing the propeller-hat types back out of the woodwork.