Is global warming argument good for nuclear industry? Yehoshua Socol,* Falcon Analytics, Karney Shomron, 4485500 Israel Moshe Yanovskiy, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, Gazetny lane 5, Moscow, 125009 Russia
Abstract During the last decade(s), global warming issue has been an important point in the nuclear industry public relations: nearly on every occasion it is stated that nuclear power plants do not burn fossil fuels and therefore facilitate decreasing the emission of carbon dioxide, considered responsible for the anthropogenic climate change. While there is no doubt that nuclear power plants contribute to decreasing the carbon dioxide emission, we consider global warming to be more a political rather than a scientific issue. It is suggested therefore that it would be beneficial for the nuclear industry to drop for good the anti-global-warming argument, keeping in mind long-term scientific reputation and public confidence. Keywords: climate change, public relations
1. Introduction During the last decade(s), global warming (GW) issue has been an important point in the nuclear industry public relations. Namely, nearly on every occasion it is stated that nuclear power plants do not burn fossil fuels and therefore facilitate decreasing the emission of carbon dioxide, considered responsible for the GW. While there is no doubt that nuclear power plants contribute to decreasing the carbon dioxide emission, the use of this argument seems to us at least controversial. 2. Controversy regarding the global warming issue First we should remind that, in spite of many statements made by many scientific and government bodies, three main questions remain actually unanswered: 1) Does global warming really take place? 2) If it does, are anthropogenic factors significant? 3) Finally, if global warming is both real and anthropogenic – is it bad for the Mankind? While thorough consideration of the above questions surely lies beyond the scope of this note, let us consider them in short. 2.1 Does global warming really takes place? According to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013, Fig. SPM-1 at p. 6), no increase in temperature is seen after about the year 2000. The temperature rise during the previous century is estimated as about 0.8oC. 2.2 If GW takes place, are anthropogenic factors significant? During the Medieval Warm Period (approximately 900 CE to 1300) the world was much warmer than now. There is historical evidence for wheat cultivation and vineyards at latitudes and elevations that were far higher than today (Rafferty, 2014), and Greenland bears its name since this icy island was green when discovered by the Vikings. So if GW really takes place, it is quite logical to attribute this phenomenon to natural reasons. Regarding the climate models that identify human-produced carbon dioxide as the cause of GW, Dyson (2007) formulated: "The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in." E.g., the climate models show greater tropical warming than has been observed for the last four decades; and arctic sea ice is showing growth against all the models' predictions (Lindzen, 2013). The IPCC (2013) *
Corresponding author. Email: socol@FalconAnalytics.com