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Old 04-05-2011, 03:49 PM   #245
Lorien Lowe
Dojo: Northcoast Aikido
Location: California
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 289
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Re: The fact that you believe a nuclear plant can explode....

'The scientists' aren't saying anything about Gaia, because Gaia is a religious concept. Tenyu is accurate, however, in that the vast, vast majority of climate scientists are in a total frothing panic about climate change, and the fact that there's even a semblance of a 'debate' about it is testimony to the power and wealth of the fossil fuel industries. Researchers do not have the personalities to advocate their points of view in the emotional ways that win arguments in our current semblance of a national dialog, and most people cannot see the drama and fear inherent in the conclusions of report after report after report by ecologists, climate scientists, epidemiologists, and others. Sometimes, fear is useful; sometimes, telling oneself that one is imagining things and that everything will be ok just leads to a really, really bad outcome.

I was reluctantly pro-nuclear before the tsunami, and based on what I know about the danger of carbon use I am still reluctantly pro-nuclear (with the caveat that we also invest in real long-term solutions like solar and wind, and regulate the hell out of nuclear). It is a question of which options cause the most total pain and suffering; nuclear seems awful right now because the problems come all at once, but very few people look at the total deaths of coal miners, rig workers, and asthma patients caused annually by fossil fuel energy, much less at the death and suffering that will happen with global climate change and/or the problems that will happen if our civilization collapses due to climate change or lack of energy.

As for what is 'natural,' fission of naturally occurring uranium is no more unnatural the conversion of billions of years of stored carbon into gasses that change the entire global climate.
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