Global Warming & Nuclear Power: Made for Each Other | National Review Online
Atomic energy is indispensable in reducing greenhouse gases, but climate-change activists don’t want to hear it.
Among the favorite claims of climate-change activists is that anyone who dares to disagree with their worldview is a “denier,” and that those who reject their orthodoxy about the workings of the Earth’s atmosphere are “anti-science.”
But when it comes to the technologies that can actually reduce the volume of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, it’s obvious that the climate-change jihadis are the ones who are anti-science.
For proof of that, consider the energy plan put forward on Monday by Bernie Sanders...
The gist of Sanders’s plan, which is modestly titled “Combating Climate Change to Save the Planet,” is to create a “completely nuclear-free clean energy system for electricity, heating, and transportation.”
It also declares that Sanders wants “a moratorium on nuclear power plant license renewals in the United States.”
Ah yes, nuclear-free.
How very 1970s.
So what does “the science” say about nuclear energy?
In January of this year, the International Energy Agency declared that “nuclear power is a critical element in limiting greenhouse gas emissions.”
It went on to say that global nuclear generation capacity must more than double by 2050 (to about 750 gigawatts) if the countries of the world are to have any hope of limiting temperature increases to the 2-degree scenario that is widely agreed upon as the acceptable limit.
The scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made it clear that nuclear energy is essential.
“...continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.”
They continued: “There is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.”
...“If I came out in favor of nuclear,” he said (McKibben), “it would split this movement in half.”
So there you have it. McKibben, like many other environmentalists, knows in his heart that there isn’t much chance of reducing carbon output without nuclear.
But he does not want to be caught saying so in public.
The punch line here is obvious.
Climate-change activists, and politicians like Sanders, prefer the convenient fib about renewables to the hard reality that nuclear energy is essential to limiting greenhouse-gas emissions.
Four years ago, McKibben made it clear that he prefers political power over truth.
Seems to me that that’s the very essence of being anti-science.
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