While Greens tout wind and solar, two of the least effective and reliable ways to provide for the nation’s energy needs, they continue to badmouth nuclear as a viable alternative.
How do you know when a Green — hardcore environmentalist — is lying to you? When his lips are moving. Okay, it’s a cliché used in other cases as well, but it is especially true when the latest absurd claim comes flying at you courtesy of the mainstream media.
Take nuclear energy as an example. A new survey by Bisconti Research, taken since one conducted in April, revealed “a record-high 74% of Americans favor nuclear energy, with only 24% opposed.” That’s a big change in just five months and no doubt has a lot to do with the growing public realization that America will have an energy crisis on its hands if it does not permit new plants to be built.
“The unprecedented levels of support for nuclear energy found in this survey,” said Ann Bisconti, “can be attributed to growing concerns about energy and focus on energy alternatives.” There are few real alternatives. At present, coal-fired plants generate just over 50% of electricity and nuclear represents about 20%. The rest is made up by hydroelectric, and some natural gas. The much touted “clean” energy sources, solar and wind, only 1%.
The Greens have a long history of being opposed to nuclear energy, claiming it is too dangerous and there’s no place to put the spent rods. However, they have also been shouting about the need for “clean” energy that does not emit “greenhouse gases.” Nuclear does not do that. It emits water vapor in the form of steam and water vapor is a key element of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Moreover, there hasn’t been an accident since the problem encountered by Three Mile Island in 1979. Even then, no one was harmed. The technology since then has ensured that the nuclear energy industry is astonishingly safe.
There’s a billion dollar facility, Yucca Mountain, waiting to receive nuclear waste, but the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV), refuses to allow it to begin operation. The facility recently received clearance from the Environmental Protection Agency for meeting a stringent radiation protection standard. You would get more radiation from a CAT scan than Yucca Mountain.
So, while Greens tout wind and solar, two of the least effective and reliable ways to provide for the nation’s energy needs, they continue to badmouth nuclear as a viable alternative. Its popularity is such that developing nations all over the world are seeking to build their own nuclear plants. India, for example, is embarked on an ambitious program.
Greens also are actively opposing nuclear energy. Friends of the Earth, a leading environment organization, is engaged in a program to denigrate nuclear energy, calling Yucca Mountain “a false solution that would run trains full of toxic nuclear waste through neighborhoods like yours.” This ignores the fact that all manner of toxic materials move around the nation every day for manufacturing and other purposes. And they do it safely.
So what do the Greens want? It’s more like what they don’t want. They don’t want more electricity for Americans no matter what generates it.
They are opposed to all expansion and development even as the population continues to grow. That’s why you will find Greens trying to stop any form of development, whether it’s more land use for housing or more energy for electricity to light and heat it. That’s why they are against any exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas and against coal.
They are against the timber industry, too, and the production and consumption of meat, claiming that raising livestock contributes to global warming.
There is no global warming. The Earth is in a new cooling cycle, but that doesn’t slow the deluge of lies.
“trains full of toxic nuclear waste”
Really short trains, maybe. Nuclear waste is extremely compact; and, with reprocessing of spent fuel, can be almost completely eliminated. Of course, militant environmentalists are against that, too. You can remove every objection to nuclear power imaginable, and they will still be against it, because you can’t remove the one thing they hate the most, which is the reason for it in the first place: more power.
“So what do the Greens want? It’s more like what they don’t want.”
They don’t want more people, that’s what. They are like the Medieval Albigensian heretics who believed that people were evil and had to be severely limited; so they promoted suicide, infanticide, and euthanasia, and condemned marriage because it produced more people. Sound familiar?
Don’t forget, Greens are also opposed to the cleanest and safest form of electricity generation imaginable: hydroelectric. In Washington State, where I have lived on and off for most of my life, each election cycle brings new Democrats who want to remove hydroelectric dams to preserve fish migration, and new Republicans who say it will destroy our economy and way of life. How the election goes all depends on the circumstances. In happy times, dismantle all the dams! In crappy times, long live electricity!
Greens are also people that realize that Dr. Marion King Hubbert was right. The discovery of oil in 1827 allowed the human race to expand exponentially and with lack therof the human race will contract exponentially.
Greens are also people that realize that the forests and especially old growth forests are vital to the stability of the biosphere. The trees work for us, they remove the excess C02, that is what we humans produce, and turn it into O2, which is what every living thing on the planet needs.
Greens are also the people that realize that the Oceans act as a giant water purification machine.
Greens realize that we humans are just as much a part of this biosphere as anything else and we must live in balance with the biosphere, or we will overbalance the system, which we have done, and then ignored what we had done.
We paid more attention to the economy and paid less attention to the actual people that the economy represents.
We believed our own press way too much.
We believed that what we thought of ourselves was more valid then what others thought of us.
Arguing about nuclear power and energy? That is not really on the table anymore. The planet is in the process of balancing the equation, that’s us. Time to step out of denial, through acceptance (<<you don’t have alot of time on that one.)) and into action.
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Look – here’s my view. When the entire sector is privatized, then those who want nuclear energy are free to build and to sign up for nuclear-generated energy. Everybody doesn’t have to be on that grid. People who want to run their homes off of solar, or hydro-electric, or a mule in a treadmill – let ‘em. Just let those who want nuclear get on with it, and the doubters and whiners get out of the way already.
And here’s the deal about global warming, cooling or whatever it’s doing. Climate change DOES happen on this planet, with enough regularity and yet our species did survive as did some sort of record of their ordeal. Numbers killed off, that kind of thing. So it is something that we should expect no matter what we do. Our technological progress could mean the difference between doing better than just surviving but actually making it work for us. The only way to do that is to secure the free market and properly limited government. Having the ability to create climate-controllable buildings of all kinds for a large number of people is frankly too big a project to entrust to government. ONLY private enterprise can get it done properly.
The Albigensian example is on target. Nuclear power is a good alternative which could reduce use of heavy oil, coal, natural gas, and other fuels used to generate electricity. The green movement world wide has become a radical religion which ignores fact and science in their effort to move to a stone age society.
Will alternate energy approaches work? Sure if a wide selection is embraced. So where are the bumps in the road moving to away from a petroleum based society? First and foremost the 10+ years it will take to make a dent in the vehicle population. Secondly the technologies to produce various alternatives being able to scale up to a major demand level…say 20 to 25 years. Third the don’t drill here, don’t use shale, don’t use coal, don’t use tar sands crowd. Fourth the geniuses that brought us corn based ethanol as a gasoline additive required by government regulation even though it cannot be mixed at the refinery and transported through pipeline. Fifth “we’re the federal government and we are here to help you” by removing the content of your wallet. Sixth the endless lawsuits using poorly crafted laws to stop all progress.
Mickey G, the answer to all of that is quite simple: vote for Capitalism in the upcoming election. Both the candidates are socialists. Try spreading the word to everyone you know who is sick of the lies and the constant despair. It’s just over the top, don’t you agree? The American Dream used to be about prosperity, and achieving goals and being happy. You know why it isn’t? Because socialism already rules everywhere to some extent or other. All the major political parties are variants of socialism. So, vote for Capitalism.