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LifestreamIndependent: Only nuclear power can now halt global warming
Professor Lovelock, who achieved international fame as the author of the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth keeps itself fit for life by the actions of living things themselves, was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat from the greenhouse effect.
In today’s Independent, Professor Lovelock says he is concerned by two climatic events in particular: the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which will raise global sea levels significantly, and the episode of extreme heat in western central Europe last August, accepted by many scientists as unprecedented and a direct result of global warming.
He writes today: “I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.”
His appeal, which in effect is asking the Greens to make a bargain with the devil, is likely to fall on deaf ears, at least at present.
I’d trust Lovelock before some snotty tree hugger any day. Having worked for NASA modelling planet ecosystems carries some considerable weight around here.
It’s not that greens in general don’t have a point. It’s more that they are so backwards and think they can solve problems with holding hands and singing Kumbaya. They are nearing Amish proportions if you’d care for a half-bad metaphor. But this polarization of ideas is of course predictable. Too bad for the greens. This is the one thing where they are really shooting themselves in the foot. Higher taxes and god knows what else they propose are viable in some way. Abandoning nuclear power is not. It’s the equivalent of Neanderthals lobbying some other Neanderthals to stop researching fire.
See also:
Gaia theory
