Friday, February 04, 2005
Sanity breaks out among British Greens.
Such is the good news from Tim Worstall, as he reports the recent statement of the British government's chief science advisor, who thinks global warming is a greater threat than terrorism...
A new generation of safe nuclear power plants and coal-fired stations that capture their carbon emissions could solve the problem of global warming, Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist said yesterday...Good for him, I hope the infection spreads to our side of the water.
Prof King expressed interest in the latest generation of small-scale Chinese pebble-bed nuclear reactors, and a different design made by Westinghouse in South Africa, which can be used in series to produce large quantities of power. He said new -generation nuclear power stations would add only 10 per cent to Britain's existing nuclear waste over 60 years.
He said the world needed to explore "every avenue" to tackle climate change including nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, renewable energy, and carbon sequestration, to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
Observers noted that his support for nuclear power goes beyond present Government policy.... [Telegraph]
Support for nuclear is the quick test I apply to determine if someone who claims to want to reduce greenhouse gasses is for real or merely a poser (or Luddite).
The world is going to want its distributed-over-the-power-grid-electricity for the next hundred years, and lots, lots more of it -- and is going to get it. And windmills aren't going to supply it.
The only options are burning ever more coal, oil and natural gas and producing all the resulting additional CO2 on the one hand, and nuclear with no CO2 on the other. So there you are, make your choice.
Nuclear also provides the remedy for what ails the proposed CO2-free "hydrogen economy" of hydrogen-powered cars and so forth. Namely the need for power, and lots of it, to separate the hydrogen -- which sends you back to burning coal, oil and gas, unless you choose nuclear.
When you have a choice to make about the real world you have to make it. Anyone who claims to be for reducing greenhouse gases but against nuclear isn't making it -- and just isn't serious.
