James Lovelock says "Nuclear power is the only green solution"

[calde...@yahoo.com]

http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.english/love-indep-24-05-04.htm

James Lovelock: Nuclear power is the only green solution

We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources;
civilisation is in imminent danger.

Published in The Independent - 24 May 2004

Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to
say that global warming is a more serious threat than terrorism. He
may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of
climate change suggests it could be even more serious, and the
greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far.
Most of us are aware of some degree of warming; winters are warmer and
spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as
great as here in Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now
plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete
dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then
the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make uninhabitable all
of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London,
Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo. Even a two metre rise is enough
to put most of southern Florida under water.
The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even more vulnerable to
warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US,
may become dark sea that absorbs the warmth of summer sunlight, and
further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of
so many explorers, will then be no more than a point on the ocean
surface.
Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree
rise in temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in
a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the world,
which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners.
The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and
six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their grim forecast was made perceptible
by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss
meteorologists, the Europe-wide hot spell that killed over 20,000 was
wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it
being a mere deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a
warning of worse to come.
What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great
Earth system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of positive
feedback. Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases,
the disappearance of Arctic ice or the Amazon forest, is amplified,
and its effects are more than additive. It is almost as if we had lit
a fire to keep warm, and failed to notice, as we piled on fuel, that
the fire was out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that
happens, little time is left to put out the fire before it consumes
the house. Global warming, like a fire, is accelerating and almost no
time is left to act.
So what should we do? We can just continue to enjoy a warmer 21st
century while it lasts, and make cosmetic attempts, such as the Kyoto
Treaty, to hide the political embarrassment of global warming, and
this is what I fear will happen in much of the world. When, in the
18th century, only one billion people lived on Earth, their impact was
small enough for it not to matter what energy source they used.
But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not
continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no chance that
the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy
and in time. If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main
sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled
by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all
fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have
already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue
burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for
civilisation.
Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our
decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the
Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30
times as much carbon as its driver; imagine the extra farmland
required to feed the appetite of cars.
By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but
only one immediately available source does not cause global warming
and that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal
or oil releases only half as much carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is
25 times as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a
small leakage would neutralise the advantage of gas.
The prospects are grim, and even if we act successfully in
amelioration, there will still be hard times, as in war, that will
stretch our grandchildren to the limit. We are tough and it would take
more than the climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of
humans; what is at risk is civilisation. As individual animals we are
not so special, and in some ways are like a planetary disease, but
through civilisation we redeem ourselves and become a precious asset
for the Earth; not least because through our eyes the Earth has seen
herself in all her glory.
There is a chance we may be saved by an unexpected event such as a
series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out sunlight and
so cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor
odds. Whatever doubts there are about future climates, there are no
doubts that greenhouse gases and temperatures both are rising.
We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is
the denial of climate change in the US where governments have failed
to give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green
lobbies, which should have given priority to global warming, seem more
concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not
noticing that we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its
well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European
deaths to wake us up.
Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by
Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears
are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved
to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the
minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly
one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe
air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to
concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we
may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from
overheating in Europe last summer.
I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the
quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings
and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and
I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded
objection to nuclear energy.
Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its
worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant
threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves
and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We
have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation
is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe,
available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted
by our outraged planet.

James Lovelock is an independent scientist, the creator of the Gaia
hypothesis which considers the Earth as a self-regulating organism,
and a member of EFN - the association of Environmentalists For Nuclear
Energy - www.ecolo.org

Source: The Independent - May 24th -2004
-----------------------------------
"The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!"
at: - http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

[calde...@yahoo.com]

Common perceptions of nuclear energy are full of inaccuracies.

1) Even older "second generation" nuclear power plants produce 93
times more energy than they consume over their lifespan, including the
energy used in their construction and decommissioning. The idea that
nuclear power is not energy and cost efficient is just plain wrong,
and nuclear power plants currently produce electricity for about 3
cents per kilowatt-hour (2008 estimate), a rate comparable to
hydroelectric power and less than natural gas or coal. The cost of
coal power is even more expensive if you figure in damage to buildings
due to acid rain and increased human health costs: the monetary value
of 24,000 human lives lost each year to coal plant air pollution, plus
those who are simply made ill.

2) If you consider the vast amounts of nuclear fuel the US Government
has in stockpile, plus the ease of recycling high level nuclear waste
through breeder reactors, the amount of uranium yet to be mined, plus
the inevitable use of abundant thorium as a fuel in breeder reactors
instead of plutonium and uranium, then the USA and the world has
thousands of years worth of nuclear fuel at its disposal and there is
no "energy crisis," only a recognition crisis. How many thousands of
years of fuel do we have? Four thousand? Six thousand? More? No
one knows for sure, but we know it is measured in the thousands of
years!

Please see my plan for American energy independence, food supply and
climate security at:

http://home.att.net/~meditation/food-preservation-act.html - the "Food
Supply and Climate Preservation Act"

Christopher Calder