Reply #2: It's pretty funny that Carter would be discussing Iranian intentions.

[NNadir]

He was pretty certain of Iranian intentions when he couldn't stop kneeling before the great and terrible Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the vicious little homicidal cretin who called himself the "Shah" (Emperor) of Iran.

In the years since being President of the United States, Jimmy Carter has done some great things for human rights, but when he was President, Jimmy Carter apparently couldn't have cared less about Savak, the Iranian KGB, not that I wish to make the KGB seem all that awful.

...SAVAK's torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Many of these activities were carried out without any institutional checks." <1>

Iranian scholar Reza Baraheni states that SAVAK's aim was to "spread a deep sense of fear, suspicion, disbelief and apathy throughout the country."

By 1978 there were huge demonstrations against the Shah that eventually led to his overthrow in 1979. On Friday, September 8, 1978 the Shah's soldiers killed as many as 900 civilians in one demonstration. Jimmy Carter called the Shah to assure him of U.S. support. At the same time, U.S. Ambassador William H. Sullivan worried that the Shah was getting cold feet, and complained that "the Shah's new directives to his security forces, such as instructions to desist from torture...are disorienting..."

http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/War/torture2.htm

The assertion of oracular authority usually depends on complete ignorance.

Irrespective of Jimmy Carter's concerns, the number of nuclear wars that have taken place in the last half a century is zero. The number of dangerous fossil fuel wars that have taken place in the last 25 years is not zero.

For instance, the Iranian-Iraq war in part a dangerous fossil fuel war. Nearly a million people were killed in this war, many of them by weapons sold to the Pahlevi, vicious dictator, murderer and close personal friend of Jimmy Carter. And if you believe for a New York second that the Iran-Iraq war wasn't involved in the history of the Shah of Iran, I'd have a billion shares of Amory Lovins' Walmart stock I'd like to sell you.

Jimmy Carter has done much to redeem himself for his cozy comfortable co-conspiracy with Reza Pahlevi, but by opposing the Iranian nuclear reactors, he is taking up the "kill Iranians" business again. First, he has no moral right to tell the Iranians anything. Hanging out with the owner of Savak eliminated that right forever. Second he apparently couldn't care less what dangerous fossil fuels do to Iranians and every other person on the face of the planet.

The number of approaches to eliminating dangerous fossil fuels without vast death without nuclear energy is zero.

Every single nuclear reactor that operates on the face of the earth saves lives if only because fossil fuels are so deadly and so dangerous that every time they are used, they kill. Thus there is a 100% certainty that the use of fossil fuels will kill.

There is a tiny potential - never actually realized - that used fuel from a nuclear reactor could be used to make a small inefficient nuclear weapon. This probability is so vanishingly small that it has only been tested once, by the United States. There is an even smaller probability, non zero but small of there actually being a nuclear war as a result of such a weapon, but like everything else, the comparison to dangerous fossil fuel tragedy - about which the mindless anti-nuke community could not care less, is ridiculous. Clearly this probability is so small that the emergence of nuclear energy as the world's largest, by far, climate change gas free form of energy, has led to zero nuclear wars.

Of course, the anti-nukes, led by the $20,000/day Walmart executive - who couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuel wars - Amory Lovins, the Oracle at Snowmass, are practicing a religion, since only a religion makes assertions that fly in the face of all the data.

Is nuclear energy perfect and without risk? No, it is not. It's simply better than all of its alternatives, by far. This is true in Iran; it is true in Argentina; it is true in Syria; it is true in Isreal; it is true in North Korea; and it is true in the United States. It is true in Botswana; it is true in Bangladesh; it is true in Antarctica.

As it happens, Jimmy Carter lived a part of his life in close proximity to nuclear reactors and he actually spent some time walking through the Three Mile Island reactor during the famous accident which, according to the sacred texts of the anti-nuke religion, wiped out everybody in Harrisburg except Jimmy Carter. So Jimmy Carter should know better about nuclear energy, and from the consequences of his close friendship with Pahlevi, all about dangerous fossil fuels as well.

Some people, usually simple minded people, wish to represent that people like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter are perfect and without flaws, major flaws. This is simply not true. Jimmy Carter had selective attention to human rights, just like mindless anti-nukes have selective attention to the threat of energy related wars, terrorism, waste, economics, accidents and pollution. In general, the anti-nuke industry couldn't care less about wars, terrorism, waste, economics, accidents and pollution connected with dangerous fossil fuels.

Jimmy Carter has lead an exemplary life, more or less, since leaving office and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Then again, Henry Kissinger was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, one million dead Cambodians - and God knows how many Chileans - notwithstanding. Jimmy Carter has some moral authority, but it is not absolute. As a man who lived close to nuclear reactors, he has some authority on nuclear issues, but as President, his action on nuclear energy cannot be described in any way other than dumb. He dismantled the US intention to reprocess used nuclear fuel and this has lead to the deaths of many tens of thousands of Americans, if not more, because it put the breaks on nuclear energy and prevented its utilization as broadly as it could have been utilized. He claimed he was going to exert "moral authority" by forgoing reprocessing. He did no such thing. He simply wasted a great opportunity to do great things.