Sunday 16 September 2012

Nuclear energy deniers

I was rebutting a comment I found under a CER News Desk article titled: Utility Head: Japan Can’t Afford Renewable Energy, Needs Nuclear when I realized I had generated enough material for an article.

Although not a single talking point in the comment I addressed is novel (few thoughts are), and not a single footnote to a source was proffered, the comment serves a larger purpose by providing me an opportunity to express some critical thought.
I don’t want the commenter to feel singled out and welcome him to continue to participate, but I would also like to suggest that he take the time to provide links to sources so the audience knows who the originators of the talking points are and so they can assess the quality of the sources of the information he passes along. I know of one site that does not allow unsourced comment. I don’t think this is necessarily a good idea because it has a tendency to spill over into censorship. They do this in an attempt to keep the comment field from becoming a come-one-come-all liar’s club (although most people are inadvertently passing along information they don’t realize — or care — is bunk).
Here is the link to my comments.
Also, here is a similar article titled Green energy to hit Germans’ bills.
What labels would you choose for yourself?
  1. Renewable Energy Advocate
  2. Nuclear Energy Advocate
  3. Renewable Energy Denier
  4. Nuclear Energy Denier
I would choose labels 1 and 2. I used the term “denier” in my title only to make a point. I don’t know who first applied the term “denier” to global warming skeptics but I have never used the term quite simply because it is hateful. I’ve also seen the terms “green energy denier” and “Chernobyl denier” used (see Radioactive Wolves!).
Global warming skeptics are not in any way analogous to the nut jobs who deny the Holocaust or the AIDS epidemic as the term is meant to insinuate. From Wikitionary:
Person who denies something.
Holocaust denier (see Wikipedia:Holocaust denial)
Global warming denier (see Wikipedia:Global warming denial)
AIDS denier (see Wikipedia:AIDS denial)
The renewables verses nuclear debate is disingenuous (and usually dishonest as well). The two energy sources are not mutually exclusive. Renewables should be viewed as an alternative to fossil fuels, not nuclear. Read The Nuclear Enhanced Renewable Grid (NERG) and Reframing Nuclear Power as an Ally of Renewable Energy.
As usual, environmental journalist George Monbiot is ahead of the curve on this issue. In a letter he penned to David Cameron earlier this year countering the letter sent “by four former directors of Friends of the Earth” Monbiot says:
“For nuclear and renewables, as the Climate Change Committee has rightly pointed out in numerous reports, this is not an either-or choice; we need increasing deployments of both in the UK’s energy mix in the future (see appendix 1). Thirdly, the 12 March letter focuses significantly on economics, in short, arguing that nuclear is too expensive. We would point out that even if this were true, the writers themselves would have helped make it so by devoting decades to campaigning against the technology during their tenures at Friends of the Earth. In addition, if anyone has yet invented an inexpensive low-carbon energy source, we have yet to hear about it – Friends of the Earth today campaigns vociferously in favour of the retention of the solar feed-in-tariff, which delivers perhaps the most expensive, unreliable and socially regressive electricity ever deployed anywhere. Once again, we would refer you to the Climate Change Committee, which found that nuclear was potentially the cheapest of all low-carbon options available by 2030 (appendix 2).”
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/09/16/nuclear-energy-deniers/

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