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In reply to the discussion: De Blasio: Bernie’s Attacks on Hillary’s Climate Change Record Are ‘Flat-Out False’ [View all]NNadir
(33,509 posts)I've been studying nuclear energy on my own time for 30 years in the primary scientific literature, as opposed to regurgitating rote nonsense on the subject, rote nonsense unfortunately dominating the conversation on one of the most important environmental issues of our time, nuclear energy.
I oppose all dangerous fossil fuels, but the fact is that the opposition to nuclear power has sustained their use.
Right now, unnoticed by the entirely clueless - and the most clueless people here at Democratic Underground in particular the people who support the absurd energy ideas of Senator Sanders - the atmosphere is undergoing it's fastest degradation observed in more than half a century of monitoring it.
2015 is the first year ever recorded in history in which the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose by more than 3.00 ppm in a single year, 3.05 to be exact.
The Sanders solution? Oppose the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy. This is dangerous and deadly in the extreme, and borders on criminal stupidity.
Now, I realize that the people who cavil the most against the world's largest source of climate change energy are generally completely and totally unfamiliar with the scientific literature. However the situation is clear in that literature with which they are unfamiliar. While they whine insipidly that nuclear energy is unsafe, seven million people die each year from air pollution.
As opposed to idiotic muttering about the Keystone pipeline as if it really mattered on the scale of 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide being dumped in the atmosphere each year, a prominent scientist has published a widely read and cited paper on the subject of the fact that nuclear energy prevented the dumping of 60 billion tons of carbon dioxide, this while saving 1.8 million lives on balance, including the Fukushima and Chernobyl events about which anti-nuke illiterates like to prattle on and on.
Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power.
(Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, 2880 Broadway, New York, New York 10025, United States
Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 48894895)
Now, I have consistently and totally opposed all dangerous fossil fuels. I have just completed 30 years of serious study convincing myself that they are totally and completely unnecessary. But I regard the mindless platitudes about pipelines and all the other bullshit from the people who do everything in their power to sustain the dangerous fossil fuel industry by despising nuclear energy as either dishonest or ignorant; it doesn't matter which.
If, for example, the world were being run on dimethyl ether produced by the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide, using nuclear thermochemical captive hydrogen, the fucking Keystone pipeline wouldn't be an issue!
On energy, Sanders is pandering stupidly to the stupid and for the stupid. He doesn't know or understand anything about the massive technological requirements of addressing climate change, and opposes the best and experimentally demonstrably successful tool for addressing it.
I note, with due contempt, that his state is now entirely dependent on gas pipelines to keep the lights on. He's such an idiot, that he applauds this outcome.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend.