Sustaining the Wind, Part I...

[NNadir]

22. Whatever. I think it's pretty clear what we think of one another.

I am firm in my conviction that opposing nuclear energy is a crime against the future.

It's in fact, a crime against the present, since nuclear energy is saving lives now, and has Hansen has shown, has saved nearly 2 million lives in the past.

I can't repeat it enough: Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Now this paper, not from some dumb website, but from one of the most respected environmental scientific journals there is, reports that nuclear power prevented the indiscriminate dumping of some 64 billion tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste during its operations. If one cared about climate change - and let's face it there are zero anti-nukes who have very much serious interest in climate change, one would know that this represents about two years worth of such dumping. This means that instead of being at a high of 404 ppm as we were this year, we would be approaching 408 or 410 at the rate we're currently seeing.

The fact is that the so called "renewable energy" scam has soaked up trillions of dollar on a planet where 2 billion people lack access to sanitary facilities, where hundreds of thousands of children go blind because of vitamin A deficiencies, where the largest killer of children is preventable diarrhea, the only result of this investment is that the consumption of oil, gas, and coal remains at the highest levels ever observed.

In general, the anti-nuke proponents of so called "renewable energy" - which is not actually renewable since it's totally mining dependent - couldn't care less about the 7 million people who die each year from air pollution, with roughly half dying from dangerous fossil fuels.

Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60 "A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010" (For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)

The increase in the accumulation of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the atmosphere has shown no change because of the nearly two trillion dollars squandered on so called "renewable energy" in the last decade alone.

You almost never hear a single example of this set talking about attacking coal, or gas. The reason is simple. The renewable energy industry would collapse in a New York second without redundant dangerous fossil fuel plants to back them up. It wouldn't matter, by the way, if it did collapse. No one would notice. Except for hydroelectricity - and we're almost out of fresh rivers to kill - it produces trivial amounts of energy. The world is consuming 560 exajoules of energy each year right now. The solar and wind industry combined don't produce 5 of them. Hell, they don't produce 3 of them.

This brings me to my point:

If, in fact, I cared what the proponents of this tremendous waste of resources, denial, and tragedy thought about me - and often the response here is nothing more than a personal attack - I would have a profound ethical problem, since I would be kissing up to the very people who are clearly ethical Lilliputians. They have their decidedly bourgeois heads up the lower entrance to their alimentary canals and my only response can be moral abhorrence.

It's been, as always, a pleasure to chat. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.