February 7, 2017 By Geert F de Vries, physicist The following is from a conversation among scientists on three continents about fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Selling Nuclear Power Based on Arguments of Its Low CO2 Footprint It is nice to be able to say “I told you so”. Here comes what I predicted the last few years ! Even earlier than expected. I said and wrote - since 2010 when I retired, had more time, and woke up to the climate/energy issue - that nuclear should not sail under the false green flag that advertises its nil-CO2 output. I said so because CO2 does not do what it is accused of, and one day people will find out. Then nuclear will lose the traction that came with the nil-CO2. And nuclear will once again be saddled with the old bugbears nuclear waste, radiation danger and proliferation. Until recently I expected that day to be another decade or more in the future. Indeed, I never expected that a guy like Trump with little sympathy for the green nonsense would come through early. But he did. And promptly we have the nuclear people already worrying, WNN saying (see 2nd para below): “there is concern among proponents of nuclear energy that all the positive momentum that nuclear energy has achieved in the eight years of the previous administration might be lost.” That is a reference to the false momentum based on its nil-CO2. In stead of waving the green nil-CO2 flag, nuclear industry should have worked all these years at dispellling the nonsense about its classic bugbears, and should have trotted out its own merits. Instead, nuclear industry leadership has allowed even itself and its own workforce to accept that irrelevant nil-CO2 story. Let’s face it, nuclear engineers and physicists are not at all better at understanding climate than lazy journalists, silly greenies, and the wider public who only know what they get fed, many since childhood. People that work at a job have no time to investigate in depth for themselves, and they live by what they receive. Which was all based on the output of the IPCC/UN/Green/warmist/alarmist/Obama/i-depend-on-my-job-inacademia/i-depend-on-my-job-in-the-renewables-industry mafia.