Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time 👀💔

[NNadir]

6. We DON'T desperately need all the solar panels and windmills that we can build.

We have been building them at an environmentally alarming rate.

They don't work.

We need to STOP repeating pabulum like "Even nuclear fuel plants, as dangerous as they are, are far less likely to end life on earth than our continuing to burn fossils fuels at the rate we are going."

Dangerous compared to what? To the gas plants that need to run whenever the sun goes down and the wind isn't blowing?

I never tire of offering up this link to what is and is not "dangerous."

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

Where exactly in this comprehensive document, is the putative death toll associated with nuclear energy? How does this death toll, if it exists (a clue, it doesn't) compare to the death toll associated with combustion while we all wait, decade after decade, for the magic solar and wind nirvana that never comes?

Nuclear energy saves lives:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895).

That's a fact.

Facts matter.

It follows that insisting that nuclear power is "dangerous," is far more dangerous than nuclear power has ever been, the bogeymen at Fukushima and Chernobyl included.

The real source of this on going tragedy is the willingness that people have to lie to themselves. Clearly that willingness is not limited to the right wing. We do it a lot ourselves.