I am secure enough to praise a conservative's thinking: Merkel Tells Germans to Think.

[NNadir]

I don't necessarily like anything about Merkel, but she is doing far more about global warming than her predecessor.

BERLIN – Worries about gas supplies from Russia and a desire to cut greenhouse-gas emissions are fueling criticism of Germany's plans to shut down its 17 electricity-generating nuclear power plants beginning as early as next year.

The nuclear energy debate resonates in environment-conscious Europe, and the question has taken on redoubled urgency this week as parts of the continent saw a three-day cutoff in Russian natural gas because of a price dispute between Moscow and Belarus, which has key transit pipelines.

Critics see Germany's nuclear phase-out plan as a relic of a bygone time, before the European Union started pressing for lower emissions thought to cause global warming and before Russia spurred doubts about its reliability as Europe's key energy supplier.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose election campaign called the phase-out “disastrous,” sparked debate when she said this week that Germany needed to consider the consequences of the shutdown deal, reached in 2000 when the anti-nuclear Greens were part of Germany's governing coalition.

“It remains a fact that the phase-out has consequences and that we must not have a ban on thinking,” said Merkel. She added that “especially those who say we don't want nuclear energy must take part in finding answers.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070111-1306-germany-nuclear.html

Of course, if you ask a nuclear opponent to "find an answer," they will start in with repeating all sorts of nonsense about how much solar cells will cost in 2050 - but at the end of the day, they will apologize for coal or pretend that coal could be "clean." The "biofuel/solar/wind will save us" is full of shit. Nuclear opponents have no interest and no insight as to how to displace fossil fuels and they will not, I predict, in our life time be able to produce a form of energy that is both as reliable or as clean as nuclear energy. Nuclear opponents are selling dangerous and fatal snake oil.

But there is no such thing a clean "coal," and the apologists are frauds.

Germany will either burn coal or it will drop the incredible paen to ignornance that the phase out represents.

If you want to know, by the way, what Schroeder is doing since he left politics with his "Green" buddies, well he's working for GazProm, the Russian gas company.

There's a lot to dislike, maybe, about Merkel, but her stand on nuclear energy isn't one of them. She's fucking right. We will all - at least those of us who are anti-nuclear - stop looking pathetic and ridiculous on the issue of energy as soon as we recognize this fact.

[Ian David]

1. All she needs is a good backrub. n/t

[demnan]

2. A conservative in Europe

is not the same as a conservative over here. They don't make koolaid quite the same way we do.

[Systematic Chaos]

3. GazProm

Sounds like a high school dance where everyone ate way too much beans and cole slaw. :rofl:

Now that I got that visual out of the way, K&R for the C(O2)lean C(O2)oal C(O2)ontingent.